Home > Magazine > Content
Reviews: Weird Old America ~ Vaudeville
Posted on Sunday, May 03, 2009 @ 12:22:24 PDT
Topic: Reviews
|
Artist: Weird Old America
CD: Vaudeville
Home: New York City
Style: Rock
Quote: "Weird Old America's Vaudeville is the new classic rock."
By Beeb Ashcroft
Modern rockers with vintage sensibilities: Weird Old America's Vaudeville is the new classic rock. With a decidedly blues-rock sensibility, the band pay tribute to their heroes of the 60s and 70s. The first few cuts hearken to the days of Cream and The Guess Who, while the remainder of the album has more of a Lynyrd Skynyrd vibe with its country-rock twang.
Kicking things off with a minute-long Latin-flavored intro, Weird Old America whets your appetite for "Devil in A Dream," a powerhouse song with Santana-worthy guitar solos. The title track is next, a fantastically catchy piece that is arguably the best on the record. You'll have your lighters out for the power ballads "Sooner or Later" and "Carry Me Away," while the second half of the record has an especially Southern Rock drawl with cuts like "Checkpoint Charlie" bringing to mind the Allman Brothers.
Vaudville is an excellent effort – the songs are well-crafted and the performances are stellar. My only wish is that the sonics had more of a vintage feel. Although they mixed it from tape after putting the the tracks through a vintage Studer machine, the album was recorded digitally and retains an altogether too-clean feel for this type of music.
Weird Old America's idols, Hendrix and Zeppelin, would record as a unit, as opposed to today's standard method of recording each band member's performance individually. Since Pro Tools didn't exist then, those bands had to keep entire takes without being able to edit or fix anything later. For Weird Old America's next effort, I would just love to see them take this (now-radical) approach to recording, since it would lend a raw authenticity that I think would sound amazing. But if my only complaint is that they sound too perfect, that's pretty good.
Artist Website: http://www.weirdoldamerica.com
|
|
| |
|
Indie-Music
Profile
