REVIEW: GREYBEARDS – FOR THE WILDER MINDS (2018)

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The second album is for the ones who dare to dream…..

Remember that feeling of true, unbridled excitement? When was the last time you felt just the absolute complete joy of something?

What I mean is this: you might love music. It doesn’t even have to be music, it could be anything. When was the last time you felt that pure thrill?

My first gig was November 20th 1991. It was Skid Row, the LA Guns and Love/Hate, I went to Birmingham NEC with my best mate. He’s still my best mate now, we’ve been to literally hundreds of gigs together since, but it’s never felt quite like that again. I’ll bet if you asked him, he’d say the same.

The reason for this nostalgia. Well it comes just after halfway on “For The Wilder Minds” and it comes in the shape of “Free”, three minutes 54 seconds precisely of the most excited you have heard a rock band in ages. “This is for the ones who dare to dream” offers Olle Westlund with an almost evangelical air and it really is. This is the sound of young men who are living their dream.

All across the ten songs – and at around 40 minutes nothing outstays any welcomes here – there is the sound of a band who is primed and ready. What do you want is a superfluous question here. The answer is simple: we want it all.

Right from the start songs are oven ready for arenas.  “Fast Asleep” is an attack on the social media driven age, but its done in massive a BFMV type way. However, the really clever bit is the solos screech like they were on one of those Skid Row records that prompted us to go to the NEC almost 27 years ago.

“One In A Billion” is another that urges you to focus on the positives, and its hook is somewhere between enormous and gargantuan, “Come Undone” initially has the same kind of riff as Stabbing Westward might have, but then Westlund lets out an exultant scream and it’s like a switch is flicked and it becomes a Feeder song from 20 years back.

Greybeards are a four piece clearly steeped in rock n roll history, and they understand the need for a strut. Indeed, if you thought their fellow Swedes Royal Republic were the kings of this sort of thing, then Greybeards might be the crown princes.

There is a definite crossover potential here, “Beautiful Things” is as soaring as the Foos, while “You Struck Me” is proof that even their mid-paced ones crackle with an urgency. Indeed, this one walks a sort of Stereophonics line throughout most of it, before concluding with a guitar solo that Ginger Wildheart would be proud to call his own.

“A Cold December” (not a Counting Crows cover much to MV’s chagrin) is the only time the lyrics ever seen downbeat, but the music – not to mention the chorus – makes up for that. Actually “Peace Of Mind” the only real ballad here, continues that change of pace, but includes some lush strings, which only serve to highlight the ambition of the band.

But this is a record that simply had to end on a high. And it does. “The Nerve” seems to be about a threesome, which is rock n roll enough, but even better, it spends the last three minutes on some “Paradise City” type solo freak out. And why? Because you can do anything you want, that’s why.

In another of the lines on “Free” – just before the solo as it happens – they sing this: “our time is now, the stage is ours, to make a mark we’re free…” Don’t doubt them. Greybeards will write a masterpiece one day. “For The Wilder Minds” isn’t quite that, but crikey, it’s a hell of a statement.

Rating 8/10

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