If you love classic rock grooves, Rose Hill Drive are going to flick all of your switches. Moon Is The New Earth is full of timeless power-trio riffing, rattling rhythms and clear soulful vocals that take in every influence from Led Zeppelin onwards. It’s American rock like mother used to make.
The caveat there being that if you’re looking for cutting edge innovation or the latest stylistic trends, Moon Is The New Earth isn’t going to do much for you. There’s no screaming, sweep-picking, drainpipe jeans or asymmetrical haircuts involved whatsoever. Rose Hill Drive don’t need or want gimmicks; they’ve got a guitar, a bass and a drumkit, and everything’s just fine.
This is a good thing from a business point of view, too; Rose Hill Drive will appeal equally to fans of the modern retro-rock crop as well as the Baby Boomers. They have the knack of knocking together soaring freeform tunes that go exactly where you think they’re going to go. Sure, it’s good to be surprised by music, but sometimes it’s just as enjoyable to strap yourself in for a fast drive around a neighbourhood you grew up in and know like the back of your hand. Moon Is The New Earth meticulously maps that neighbourhood, right down to the short-cuts and cut-price booze outlets.
The outcome being that Moon Is The New Earth is familiar to the point of predictability, but Rose Hill Drive spice their meat and potatoes rock songs with enough extra flavour to keep Moon Is The New Earth from being twelve re-runs of the same tune. The intro to “8th Wonder” draws on early Soundgarden for its Eastern sitar twang and then picks up with a pacey backbeat groove, “Godfather” sounds like Weezer doing The Who (or maybe the other way around), and album opener “Sneak Out” is a grab bag of alt-rock hooks strewn through a roaring blues-rock anthem. But Rose Hill Drive actually sound their best when driving the oldest roads of all.
The roaring who-gives-a-damn road-trip of “Trans Am” is cliché at its most glorious, from its lyrical homage to American muscle cars to Daniel Sproul’s driving chords and screaming free-form solo, harking back to a more innocent era when the romantic concept of America hadn’t been tarnished by the actions of its government – a time when half the world would have mentioned California in their list of ultimate travel destinations. This evocation is Rose Hill Drive’s strength, but it’s their weakness too – nostalgia sells for a strong dollar in hard times, but the hard times (hopefully) won’t last forever.
But there’s always a market for bands who play solid live shows of straightforward blues-based rock, and on the evidence of Moon Is The New Earth, Rose Hill Drive are likely to be gigging for a long time to come. In the meantime, your windows-down driving-to-the-beach album for the summer is sorted.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: blues-rock, classic rock, Moon Is The New Earth, psychedelic, rock, Rose Hill Drive, stoner
