Waiting for a band to arrive onstage the other day, Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” came over the PA.
I knew every word. Still do.
Yet, Dear Reader, if you asked me what I reviewed last week, I’d struggle.
Part of me never really left that period between 1986 and 1992, I guess. And the same is apparently true for Harsh, except I doubt any of them were even born.
Feels is their second album and, right from the title track, it has that swagger. That sense of: yeah, we’re four young lads from France, but why shouldn’t we dream of arenas? Why the hell not?
The solo soars as high as Albert Arnold’s vocals, and the whole thing carries itself like a band that has decided there’s absolutely no point thinking small.
“All I Ever Wanted” likes that idea so much it basically does it all again. Huge melodies, huge guitar work and the kind of chorus that seems designed for people to yell back from somewhere near the cheap seats.
“Fuel To The Fire” has a bit more sleaze about it. “Fuck you, we know how to party,” sings Arnold, and you get the feeling that somewhere, somehow, a backstage dressing room has just become nervous.
Oddly, though, the songs that suit Harsh best might be the slightly more mid-paced ones. “Offer You A Rome” has that something extra: a little more space, a little more drama and the sense that there is more to this band than simply reviving the glory days of hair metal.
And that’s the thing about Harsh. When they do stuff like “Don’t Mess With Me”, the harmonies are pure Danger Danger circa 1989, before they slipped the big one, and you can picture Séverin Piozzoli with his hair flailing around as the guitars fly.
There’s no irony here, though. That is crucial. Harsh aren’t standing outside this music pointing and laughing at it. They believe in it, and that makes all the difference.
In old money, side one of the cassette finishes with a big old ballad. Naturally.
“Forever Yesterday” gets the acoustics out, but it builds in the classic fashion. Big vocals, bigger guitars, the works. Given everything else that has happened up to this point, this will surprise precisely no one.
Side two, if you will, modernises things a touch with the superb “Back To Life”, on which Piozzoli’s guitar work is again right at the front. Behind him, bassist Julien Martin and drummer Léo Löwenthal give the songs the sort of muscular backbone that means even the slickest material here still packs a punch.
“Maniac” is more like the rest of the record. Except, of course, it’s a cover of the old Flashdance song.
Harsh manage to make it their own, too. The middle section is genuinely heavy, and what could easily have been a throwaway novelty becomes something that fits naturally into the record.
But should you be looking for the best thing here, look no further than “Losing My Mind”.
Tucked away towards the end it might be, but the cowbell-drenched beauty of this thing could have come out at almost any point since 1985 and belonged. It has the swagger, the hooks and the sheer belief that made this sort of music so much fun in the first place.
“Dancing Dancing” rhymes “sweat” with “wet” and isn’t about to apologise for it. Nor should it.
The second ballad – and they always had at least two back in the day – is the rather more stoic “Never Gonna See Me Fall”, before it all ends with the brilliant melodic hard rock of “When We’re Together”.
It is, frankly, the sort of thing Bon Jovi should still do but don’t.
Mention of JBJ and his boys, though, makes me think of the Access All Areas video they put out documenting the New Jersey tour. In it, Jon is asked whether what they do is fashionable, and he replies with something along the lines of being so far out of fashion that eventually it will come back into fashion.
Maybe it never went away.
Maybe there were always kids somewhere hearing Cinderella on a PA, knowing every word and thinking: I want to make music like that.
Whatever the answer, Harsh clearly aren’t interested in treating this stuff as some sort of museum piece. Feels is energetic, melodic, occasionally gloriously daft and completely sincere.
More than that, it sounds like a band with ambition.
Harsh, in general, and Feels, in particular, appear to be positioning themselves as one of the best of rock’s new breed.
RATING: 8.5/10
