CD Review: Silver Rocket - Old Fashioned

Written by Peer Lebrecht Thursday, 19 January 2012 10:19

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Artist: Silver Rocket
Title: Old Fashioned
Genre: Post Punk / Wave Rock
Release Date: 13th January 2012
Label: afmusic

Album Review

Is it possible to make music that is straight and direct, simple (in a readily accessible way) and honest by avoiding any kind of embellishment and needless, blurring musical theorem, that is melodic, catchy and able to find its way directly in your veins anyhow? While listening to ‘Old Fashioned’, the debut fulltime output by the Italian band SILVER ROCKET I can answer this without any doubt: Yes! Let me prove that.

Founded in 2009 in Ferrara (a well-known university city in northern Italy), the trio got never tired of emphasizing that it was at no time their intention to reinvent musical expressions or to celebrate some kind of artistic aspiration. It was always about the unequivocal credo of Rock Music- Play it, feel it and have fun! And this is what they do. Founding their language in the frugality Rock’n’Roll, the extroversion of Punk and the melodies of the New Wave, they stylistically copy and paste in such a cheeky but heartfelt way, that it’s pure joy to comb through the eleven songs for finding reference and quotes. (Beside the fact, that they are just good songs!). So you can pick up reflections of IGGY & THE STOOGES or THE RAMONES, best to find in songs like ‘The Worst Is Yet To Come’ or ‘Untitled’ with their minimalistic, punctured arrangement, kept alive by rattling drums, pumping basses and drilling guitars, which clear the way for an undressed energy, determined and feisty.

‘The Getaway’ evokes memories of the early (and more raspy) days of the PSYCHEDELIC FURS, with that combination of filthy sounds and catchy melodies, whose tenor is oscillating between sensibility and truculence. ‘Fail and Disaster’ seems animated by its flamboyant guitars, which build walls of rumpus and distortion, as to find in some noisy escapades of SONIC YOUTH (incident that SONIC YOUTH released a single called ‘Silver Rocket’ back in 1988, or synchronicity?) or THE PIXIES, whereas songs like ‘Bunny Ears’ or ‘Target’ own that artistic simplicity, what was celebrated by THE VELVET UNDERGROUND in perfection. Not to forget the album’s only “official” cover song ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra, whose fifties-prom-sound seems like a parrot among doves, a bit out of line (and not really necessary in my mind). The glue, that sticks all this together is the voice of Bruno, which is not rich of variety, but always finds the fitting timbre between aggression and apathy, boredom and enthusiasm, waxed with that rasping and blurring naughtiness like a blend of Lou Reed, Richard Butler and Shane McGowan

And as curious as it sounds, but among all these imprints and footsteps the band is able to create a freshness in all these familiar sounds, a kind of an exciting deducting, what makes the title of the album become a (maybe wanted) phrase of irony. Let’s summarize the same way as the music suggests, without detours and straightforwardly: it’s a great and an enjoyable album. It’s not a musical virgin territory and it will not break down stylistic borders, but it never professed that and coming from the blood it seems more authentic than many others. It’s entertaining and kicking and it’s handmade honesty proves what good music only has to be: perceptible!


Tracklist

01. The Worst Is Yet To Come
02. The Getaway
03. Saturate
04. Indifferent
05. Walk Out That Door
06. Failure And Disaster
07. Static
08. Bunny Ears
09. Untitled
10. That's Life
11. The Target


Line-up

Bruno – Bass / voice
Ummer – Guitars
Zivago – Drums


Website

www.silverrocket.net


Cover Picture




Rating

Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10