Featuring guitarist/vocalist Lance Skybaby and drummer Carl D – both last seen around these parts as part of Stevie R Pearce‘s Hooligans – hardcore troubadours Small Town Saviours are here, and they might just be your fave new raucous, full-force rock n’rollers…
Most bands would kill to open with three songs as good as No Rats, No Snakes, No Second Takes, E.N.E.M.Y. and The Drinking Song; Indeed most bands would rest easy on their laurels releasing an album with three songs as good as these to be found within it’s grooves. But, midway through the album – on the grinding Translation Invariant – you realise the the STS production line has come up with an entire album of big-bollocked boozing anthems the likes of which those bands would kill to even appear on the same bill with. This is full-on, unbridled rock n’roll mania, people, and it looks and feels suspiciously like the real thing!
Produced superbly by Dave Draper – who has given the album a big, beefy sound that punches out of the speakers with real intent to do damage – tracks like superb standout London Ain’t Calling are honestly just about as good as it gets in the world of low-slung, guitar-driven hedonism in 2023. Sounding for all the world like The Professionals circa 1979 – and that’s a very good sound, I’m sure you’ll agree – the Saviours’ simultaneously world-weary yet life affirming racket won’t fail to get you up and about every time it comes into contact with your lug holes; We’ve used the phrase before – and we’ll doubtless use it again – but if the idea of ‘music as a contact sport’, excites you, then this is a record you’re going to want to familiarise yourself with over the coming months.
Bassist T Bone and guitarist Skinny Pete are both intrinsic to the widescreen mayhem falling out of your speakers, bringing their own takes to the madness. From smiley, Wildheartey-feelgood rock n’roll (Home Town Hero) through crushing metal (It’s All Going To Hell has an eerie ring of nineties Brit metal hopefuls Whatever to it) and jangly indie pop (Ride It Out) to wryly-observed country paeans (Wild West (Berkshire)), the Small Town Saviours have taken the best of what’s great about rock n’roll in all it’s facets, swilled it around in a grubby shot glass and rebuilt the subsequently-emerging cocktail in their own image. It’s heady, one-hundred-proof stuff, to be sure, and I guarantee you’ll be steeping yourself in it’s charms as soon as you come into contact with it. What a way to kick off the new year!
Small Town Saviours releases on January 27th.
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