Classic Rock from California that goes where it likes
Listening to this, the third album from Californian four-piece Slow Season, it is no exaggeration to say that you are never quite sure whether it’s a new record or not.
That’s because for the most part the eight songs here don’t concern themselves with any modern trends whatsoever. The music on “Westing” really could have come from any point along rock n roll’s rich history and not sound dated.
The band have a rare gift for writing new stuff and making it sound familiar. Opener “Y’Wanna” sounds like Jane’s Addiction in the summer of love, for example, and its follow up “Flag” possesses a groove that would make a 1990s Desert Rock band jealous – but then, just when you think you’ve got it, and the band, pegged, they add a totally unexpected (and it should be added without a hint of tongue in cheek self-consciousness) “na-na-na” hook and take it to somewhere else entirely.
Much of this, you’d guess, is because for a year they literally pleased themselves. They recorded the album over a 12-month period and in-between tour dates with labelmates Electric Citizen and Mondo Drag. Producing it themselves and committing it to wax with old school analogue technology.
The result is something that, even if the songs weren’t so good, would still be sonically compelling and considering the length of time it took to make, still sounds remarkably fresh and cohesive.
“The Jackal” with its outright delta blues stylings, is a real highlight, and you’d imagine that “Saurekonig” knows damn well it sounds like Led Zeppelin and moreover would welcome the comparison.
Where a lot of bands would feel the need to need to be epic, not so Slow Season. Freely admitting they weren’t looking for a particular sound here, instead they have been able to hop around wherever they liked, the fuzzed up “Damascus” is particularly glorious, and “Miranda” is almost funky, while at the same Doors-like.
The stripped back “Manifest” sees acoustics mesh with organ in a wonderful way, but just around the corner comes “Rainmaker” and sounds pretty evil while it’s about it.
According to singer/guitarist Daniel Rice, “Westing” is a story based on “a loose narrative about our nation’s loss of innocence as it explores its frontiers,” ironic then, that in so doing it takes the music back to its simplest and perhaps most innocent times and in so doing Slow Season have come up with something that would have been superb in any era.
Rating 8.5/10
