The best day you’ve ever had.
Think about it.
Right now, to be honest, you’d probably settle for a normal day where you could go out of your house, but generally speaking. What was it?
The Stoke City FA Cup Semi final win over Bolton in 2011, that’s there, or the day I passed my driving test, went to the record shop to celebrate (I bought “Definitely Maybe” and the debut record by the Presidents Of The United States Of America as it goes) and found a tenner in the bus stop on my way home. That was a good’un too.
Now, see, my idea of a perfect day might not give Lou Reed a run for his money the big old nuisance that he is, but Jenni Powell might understand. Halfway through “Rock N Roll Daydream” there’s a glorious sugar coated power pop song, called “Best Day Ever” amongst the glorious things that happened to her, well she found $50 in her car and went to the beach.
That’s so much in keeping with the record too. Because as the name says, this is about escapism, and if each song has a truly distinct feel, they are built around two things. 1) Well, as the name of the band indicates, riffs and 2) simplicity. Wonderful simplicity.
“When I am Dreaming” adds a touch of psychedelia (think a bit of Enuff Z Nuff if you’re old enough) but the dreams include sleeping with all you like (fair do’s we’ve all had those type of dreams and I am waiting for lockdown to end so me and Kylie can get it on) but eating all the cakes too – and you simply have to love that.
It’s odd actually, because when “Loaded Gun” kicks this off, it does so with some real ZZ Top style boogie, and I thought I’d got this sussed. They’d come out of Melbourne with some southern swagger and a neat line (“you’ve got a newsfeed nosebleed” sneers Powell here) or two, but nope. They’ve out thought you here.
RR are the masters, as far as I can tell of three minute rock songs. “Stop Looking At Me” is modern hard rock and the godawful dullards in Shinedown need to take a refresher course off it, and you have to love a band, that writes a song about one of their fans losing an album on the train and someone giving it them back – well you do if it’s a slice of pop rock worthy of Redd Kross, which sums up “Samantha Jones” just about perfectly.
Even the ballads crackle with a sense of fun. “Light” is floating on some cloud I can never reach, and a word too for Marty Powell’s brilliant guitar work that propels this. “Stepping On A Cloud” has the sort of vibe that The Electric Boys always did when I was growing up, and the more strident, soulful rocker “Standing On My Own” drips with sass – and if like me, you’ve always loved Suzi Quatro, then step right in.
Jenni’s voice matches the versatility of the guitars too, “Sunset To Sunrise” has just a touch of latter day Whitesnake about its sparse acoustics, and when it builds, man, you can feel the talent.
The longest song here is the last one, “Shade” and although it is less than five minutes, it has a real epic sound, which both sounds totally different to anything that’s gone on before it, yet somehow sounds totally in keeping.
This is the bands second record – hands up here I haven’t heard the debut – and it comes with a line-up change. It is the sound of a band that understands the history of rock n roll, probably daydreamed about emulating their heroes and has now realised that ambition.
This is brilliant. And it is brilliant entirely on its own terms. Classic rock champions, their press release called them. Surely then, they are Raiders of a lost art, if you’ll forgive the pun.
Rating 9/10
