Extra-large everything and a diet coke, please
“In the midday’s light /right in front of your nose/we came to steal the show”: Crobot, Steal The Show, 2016
Nail. Head. Squarely.
And in fact, so accurately does that hook line sum things up, the next 800 odd words of gushing fanboy crap might be superfluous. To be honest, the temptation to write “Crobot rule all” again and again like some kid in detention at school, is in our minds right now – if for no reason than it would give MV more chance to listen to the damn thing.
But such thoughts are kinda frowned upon, especially in the cooler than thou world of rock journalism, where things are supposed to be cynical, but here’s the thing that no one actually dares to admit, so we are gonna, right now. All rock journalists are desperate for their Jon Landau moment.
For those who don’t know, Landau was a rock writer, who in the early 1970s wrote one of the most famous lines of all time. He was in Cambridge, Massachusetts when he saw a 27 year old singer songwriter play a live gig and announced: “Tonight I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
And generations of people who wrote about music afterwards went: “ooohhh, you bastard.”
The closest MV will probably ever come to such a glorious epiphany was in 2014, when a then relatively unknown band from Pottsville, Pennsylvania (and that just sounds so much cooler than Solihull, West Midlands, right?) Tweeted us to ask whether we’d like to review a debut record they’d just stuck out.
“Something Supernatural” it was called, and the intervening two years haven’t diminished this belief was the best debut record since The Wildhearts’ “Earth Vs” and was right up there with Guns n Roses “Appetite For Destruction” (to give that statement some context, that remains this reviewers favourite album of all time) and a love affair with Crobot was born.
Now some two years later the four piece are back (not that they seem to have been away as they’ve been frequent visitors to these shores) and ladies and gents, album number two is incredible.
In fact, scratch that, “Welcome To Fat City” is phenomenal. That much is obvious from the second that the mighty, ginormous riff of the swinging dick of the title track kicks in, and as it does the thought that if they do need a wrecking ball when they renovate the Houses of Parliament, they could use this as an alternative. How Chris Bishop manages to create this wall of sound it is probably best not ask, as surely it isn’t of this world, just instead be grateful he does.
“Play It Cool” likes this idea so much it does it again, with a little more of a dirty funk thing going on, as Jake Figueroa (one half of the pairing of brothers with Paul who form the best rhythm section in the business) gets all loose limbed on us, something he manages to even better effect on the astonishingly good “Easy Money” – which is just about the dirtiest blues song you can possibly imagine and gives singer Brandon Yeagley the chance to blow on his harmonica for the first time.
Indeed, Yeagley might well be recognised in time as one of the vocalists of his generation, capable of restraint at points of “Not For Sale” he will soon be roaring like Chris Cornell did back in the day, and his performance here is like no one else’s.
Not that “….City” is entirely an exercise in bluster, “Hold On For Dear Life” has a psychedelic thing going on amongst the slamming chorus, and “Temple In The Sky” has a hypnotic hint before soaring somewhere else altogether.
For a band who only formed five years ago, Crobot have a distinctive sound all of their own. “Right Between The Eyes” which comes on as their “I Love It Loud” moment if you will, could only be these men, and that is to their credit, and the crushing “Blood On The Snow” is more of the same.
Those who loved their debut – and really if you didn’t then there’s something wrong – will find much to enjoy as this pretty much has the same template. That extends to the lyrics too, the man who warbled about “Spacebourne Killers” on the last one is still very much in his own world, but there’s still room for gems like this on the record’s ballad “Moment Of Truth.” “I swear if looks kill” muses Yeagley, “you’d be headhunting” – and if anyone knows what “Plague of the Mammoth” is on about then do let us know.
There is, though, one thing about it we do understand: it will make people headbang all over the planet, because everywhere there is someone with rock n roll in their veins and a riff in their hearts, there must be a Crobot fan and “Welcome To Fat City” will move them into the big leagues.
Rating 10/10
