Sultans
Shipwrecked (Swami)
by Craig Regala
Condensing a third of Freud into their disc art alone, these men (MEN!) fully expulse the beauty of perfectly held rock and roll to articulate… well, a lotta stuff about girls and whatnot.* My wife asked, “What is this? Joe Jackson?” I was taken aback… a bit. Then the thinking part kicked the duh part of my brain, and yup, this does have a quick burn enviously desirous power pop sting among the rock and roll heisted from the greats (Bo, Faces, Rocket From The Crypt, Stiv Bators, Flaming Groovies, Dictators, The Last, et. al) pulled like pork through all sortsa hook-filled sour’n’sweet chiming from the past billion years.
The tunes, recording, thematic concerns, beats, and melodies are all right on, unless you don’t like the Stones’ “Get Off My Cloud.” Or The Von Bondies. Or Boss Martians. Or the first Romantics record, Dirt Bike Annie, or those who rock via hook, hoopla, and a dash of scarf-wearing flare. I dig it a bunch. The Swami A&R team has their pants screwed on right, for sure.
(www.swamirecords.com)
* The definition of “whatnot” owes to the bio-determinist side of socio-biology; ie. monkeys and tigers murder each other and each others spawn as much as they cooperate in killing other animals. That this has been filtered into various states of competition that are less bloody is due to the civilization’s actual existence.