Given that “Gimmie Love” just starts with absolutely no intro whatsoever (or maybe that foreplay is a better word?) we can assume maybe that there was a real urgency about Electric Mary this time around.
They’ve got heroes to emulate after all. In their native Australia, they’re a big deal.. Whitesnake took them on the road, Judas Priest asked them to support, Deep Purple had them in stadiums. Kiss, Alice Cooper, Motorhead, Def Leppard – they’ve opened for them all.
They’ve been at this for a decade, and “Mother” is their fourth album, so really, perhaps there is something in that whole urgency thing.
It is fair to say too, that they are still – rather criminally in truth – something of a secret over here. I saw them a few years back and was moved to conclude: “Surveying the crowd and trying to get a singalong going, Rusty [Brown – Electric Mary singer] deadpans: “tonight we are gonna make 27 people sound like 10,000.” This probably isn’t what they had in mind when they flew from Melbourne, but if anyone’s upset it doesn’t show, and Electric Mary look like the type of band that would have played in your living room if you offered them a gig there.”
The reason for that came in something that Brown has said about the band both before and since. “Rock n Roll the way it used to taste…..”
Those words are interesting, when you think about it, so Classic Rock then? Well, yeah. But not quite.
And as much as I like to chuck the phrase about and it actually means nothing, the fact is that if you played “Gimmie Love” to anyone, the only conclusion they could possibly reach is that is rock n roll that knows its way around the big beasts. Think somewhere in between Led Zep and Saxon, so pretty classic, but then. Well, then there’s a dirty bass hum. Righteously filthy too and it propels the thing along.
Look, no one is ever going to listen to the brilliant “Hold On To What You Got” and think it is anything new. Equally no one is going to listen to it’s Free-ish flavour and think it is anything like a covers band either, and the massive groove – when I say massive, then gargantuan is more appropriate – to “How Do You Do It” is ready to shake mountains, but the verse is absolutely bluesy and reflective.
That is what Electric Mary do. They take from everywhere but build something all their own. Pete Robinson and Brett Wood’s guitars are largely to thank for that, but there is a real class about the whole quartet.
Most songs sprawl along in their own time too. There is something of the wandering sound of summertime about “Sorry Baby” while “The Way You Make Me Feel” is shorter, sharper and pretty effective. Reminiscent, maybe of the Little Angels albums I used to love as a boy, it whips up a real storm.
“It’s Alright” is a real jolt. Not because it is any great musical departure, but the way the lyrics are delivered is so understated when compared to the others. Brown almost speaks the verses, but there’s an undeniable passion about it all when he says: “I don’t hold the key to you, or anything you wanna do, destiny is in your hands, make it what you will” and the chorus absolutely soars, as if they have an eye on those stadiums themselves. It makes for a real highlight.
“Long, Long Day” is another that messes with the formula, sounding like something that “Badmotorfinger” era Soundgarden might have done, it is a stellar statement.
As is the title track. The shortest thing here, the catchiest too and perhaps the loudest and the proudest, it is, as Brown puts it, to deliver the punchline to the record. It does that too, and if this brings us back full circle and this is the woman he wanted love from at the start, then it seems like a happy ending while its about it.
I’ve taken almost 750 words here to say what the cover of the album made plain. “Mother” is a record that has its roots in a different time, but belongs very much to the here and now. It is vast in scale and it wants it all. Nothing sounds as good as when a guitar comes through a Amp Stack, and that’s basically “Mother” in a nutshell.
Rating 8.5/10
