Blues Pills: Birthday album review
SUBSCRIBE TONIGHT prime video
For fans of rootsy, psychedelic rock, Blues Pills have long been a fascinating proposition, their self-titled 2014 debut setting out their stall as holders of the patchouli-scented cosmic rock flame – with powerhouse vocalist Elin Larsson an amalgam of singers from Janis Joplin and Maggie Bell to Shocking Blue’s Mariska Veres.
However, despite a promising follow-up in 2016’s Lady In Gold, they’ve since seemed to lose the laser focus, and the departure of guitarist Dorian Sorriaux in 2018 was the precursor to 2020’s disappointing Holy Moly!. Recorded in a few weeks in Varberg, deep in the Swedish countryside, and produced by Grammy-nominated Freddy Alexander, their fourth studio album finds them recapturing at least some of that earlier purpose.
Larsson discovered she was pregnant during recording, and a carpe diem urgency rips through the barnstorming opening title track, the singer announcing: ‘I’m gonna ruin someone’s birthday!’ before declaring: ‘I just don’t give a damn no more, I got a new disease inside my bones!’ over the kind of molten riffing that made The Soundtrack Of Our Lives such a festival draw back in the early 00s.
While Motown-style stomp Bad Choices and mega-ballad Top Of The Sky have the feel of table-pleasing stabs at commercial success, there’s genuine emotion in the malevolent Holding Me Back, Larsson declaring: ‘You’re always holding me back, how fucking drives me mad’. Like A Drug is a pulverising examination of emotional addiction, while I Don’t Wanna Get Back On That Horse Again hints at disillusionment with the whole pop process, Larsson asking: ‘Do I have to get out of bed today?’
This simmering tension ensures that Birthday comes with a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments. Shadows is swamp blues of such white-knuckle intensity that you can imagine festival audiences quaking in its presence, while Somebody Better builds from a shimmering, bluesy intro into a stadium-sized anthem of eye-bulging intensity, Larsson’s bluesy exclamations a wonder to behold as she hollers: ‘You fuck with my brain, making me go insane!’
Blues Pills might not be to everyone’s taste, but at their best there’s still plenty to celebrate.
SUBSCRIBE TONIGHT prime video
Source link
