TAFKAVince Band - A Problematic Opera (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Garage Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Kudos to the Artist Formally Known as Vince for a name that grabs attention in a crowded market; it certainly elicited a smile from me when this was submitted for review. Now, it's all fine and good to get eyeballs on your product, of course, but the product has to stand for itself once it's been noticed. Fortunately, this is fun enough stuff to work and Vince isn't new at this, with releases going way back to the nineties.

They describe themselves as glam trash rock 'n' roll, which is as fair a description as any, but to me they sound like a garage rock band playing pop songs, though what precise sort of pop songs has a lot to do with whichever one we're listening to. Expiration Date is a quirky pop song in the vein of maybe Missing Persons, sans squeaky voice, but Sugar Pills ups the punk guitar, even finding what sounds very much like Rose Tattoo's Nice Boys at one point, and Conquer the World dips obviously into seventies glam rock. That's a riff we might expect from the Sweet but the vocals don't follow suit.

While Vince himself delivers the most prominent voice on Expiration Date, his is not the only voice here because Lauren Kurtz also sings lead and the pair often sing the same thing together. In some songs, it's hard to tell which is singing lead and which backup, because they're kind of both singing both. That leads me to pull in a B-52s comparison, but this is rock music just as much as it's pop and the B-52s never quite went there. Maybe this is the B-52s with a little Cramps thrown into the mix. However, each song, for all that they play consistently together, generates different comparisons.

There's some straight up rock 'n' roll soloing on Magazine Pages but it approaches rock 'n' roll the way the Beatles did, so it's very much a pop song rocked up. This would be an easy song for a bunch of different bands to cover and put their own very different spins onto it. The title track, even with that nod to opera in its name, is old school British punk in the Buzzcocks style but with those poppy vocals. Of course, it drops into a pop opera midway, complete with guest accordion and euphonium, of all things, and it ends, after the band have downed their instruments, in solo calypso guitar. This is agreeably unusual and highlights how Vince isn't interested in playing every song the same way.

In fact, the only song that feels pretty straightforward is Rabbit Hole, which is the closest to pure garage rock. It kicks off with drums, adds bass and unfolds exactly as we might expect for a bunch of young musicians playing in a garage with simple equipment. Except when it isn't, because they just have to throw something more unusual into the mix and here that comes in Kurtz's vocals, as she adds quirky flourishes here and there to punctuate their typical joint male/female lead.

And that's it, because this is an EP rather than a full album, with the length the most obvious flaw. There are only six tracks on offer and they're generally not particularly long, four of them ending under three minutes and the relatively sprawling Expiration Date only lasting to three and a half. That just leaves Conquer the World to stretch out to a breath over five minutes, making it almost an epic for this band. That means that this EP wraps in under twenty minutes, which isn't long for an established and experienced band. Then again, it's only $7 on Bandcamp, so it's fairly priced.

I liked this, in large part because it feels honest. I've heard a lot of very carefully produced albums in 2023, where engineers, mixers and producers have dedicated energy to making them sound exactly right. This, on the other hand, feels exactly like the five members of the band showed up, plugged in and blistered through twenty minutes of music on the spin, just for the love of performing. The only reason I know this really was produced is because there are moments clearly done in post, like the radio voices within Expiration Date.

The point is that this back to basics approach feels vibrant and refreshing. I bet they have a lot of fun on a live stage and, given that they're based out of Chicago, maybe I'll have chance at seeing them some day. Thanks for sending this over, folks!

Chip Z'Nuff - Perfectly Imperfect (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Pop/Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Mar 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

I think there's a mindset, if anyone actually thinks about it, that pop music and rock music are two separate things and the modern split between the two was epitomised in the rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The former were pop and the latter were rock and you kind of had to choose sides back then, even though I'm sure most people really didn't. Generally speaking, it's certainly a lot easier to see the Stones in rock and metal, even if you have to really trawl through a long lineage if you're listening to Impaled Nazarene. Here's a great example why that isn't always true.

Chip Z'Nuff is, of course, the bassist and rhythm guitarist with Enuff Z'Nuff, a band who showed up at exactly the wrong time and got unfairly associated with the glam metal genre, which they had a tiny amount to actually do with. He's their lead singer nowadays too, but this is a solo album and a mindset that has seen Enuff Z'Nuff gradually morph into a modern American take on the Beatles infuses this solo album too, even with a line-up that features members of Whitesnake and Guns n' Roses.

The Church nails that primary influence on the door in a mere forty-nine seconds of intro. This is a late Beatles era album, between Sgt. Pepper and the White Album. The songs that follow confirm that but also highlight that Z'Nuff is updating that sound to a more modern setting, via a bundle of other Beatles-inspired pop/rock bands, some of which are gimmes and others that seem a little more surprising. From the former category, Cheap Trick are namechecked on I Still Hail You.

Heaven in a Bottle reminds just how much Cheap Trick owe to the Beatles, so it's not too shocking to discover that Daxx Nielsen plays acoustic drums on this album. Daxx is the son of Cheap Trick's lead guitarist Rick Nielsen, of course, but he's also their current drummer, with a full dozen years behind their kit. Roll On reminds just how much ELO owe to the Beatles too. There's plenty of ELO in 3 Way as well, though that also points the way to the Mott the Hoople cover to close things out, which is a perky take on Honaloochie Boogie that owes as much to T Rex and Tom Petty as it does to Mott.

There are other sounds here, especially early on, after the intro gets us in the mindset. Welcome to the Party is rather like the Beatles playing Nirvana (the nineties one, not the psychedelic band from the sixties), because they just wouldn't be able to lose that perkiness even if they're playing deliberately non-perky material. For much of its running time, Doctor is a typical Sgt. Pepper era song but there are points where it drops into Saigon Kick. Ordinary Man adds some Living Colour-esque riffing midway, which I'd like to have heard more often.

The lead guitar here is played by Joel Hoekstra, who keeps showing up on a variety of albums I'm reviewing—not just his own band, Joel Hoekstra's 13, but albums by Michael Sweet, Rob Moratti and Whitesnake, which I guess we could call his day job—and, as that suggests, he's a thoroughly versatile guitarist who can play this material any way Z'Nuff wants him to. What I like about what he does here is that it doesn't seem to be much at all, if we don't think about it. There's guitar on the album where it should be but we don't really notice it. Until we do. And then we start to grasp just how much Hoekstra is doing without it seeming like he's doing anything.

I can't say this is going to be my favourite album of the year, but a good part of that is because I've always been a much bigger fan of the Stones than the Beatles, even if I like the latter too. I have a feeling that the more you skew the other way, the more you'll like this. It's a solid pop/rock album, even if the best songs may show up late. I'd call out 3 Way as the best, with Heroin chasing it, if you pardon the pun, with its tasty western harmonica, and they're the last two until the Honaloochie Boogie cover closes things out. It's a good way to end an album, even if I'm not the target audience.

The Night Flight Orchestra - Aeromantic II (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 3 Sep 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Back in the mid eighties, when I stumbled onto rock music, there was a genre that was frequently mentioned that seems to have vanished in the decades since and that's pomp rock. I haven't seen that term used in forever but the genre is still being played to this day and by few better than the Night Flight Orchestra, who emphatically explore it on this album, which is a direct sequel to their 2020 album, Aeromantic. Pomp rock is a particular flavour of melodic rock that's perfect for arena crowds because of its strong hooks and particularly its driving beats and prominent keyboards.

The usual suspects spring quickly to mind as comparisons, especially early on with the purer pomp rock tracks in the first half that scream Journey, Boston and Jefferson Starship. I heard Demon as well, especially on Violent Indigo, but that's accidental as this is such a quintessentially American sound; it's coincidence that Björn's Strid's voice has a similar clean rasp to Dave Hill's. Some songs are more like Journey, such as Burn for Me, while others, like How Long, really channel the Mickey Thomas era of Jefferson Starship. There's even some Alan Parsons Project in Change, because the NFO are channelling the entire era rather than any particular band.

And that's why, as the album runs on, we start to realise that it isn't just pomp rock. In fact, it isn't even just rock, because there's pop here too and all those seventies genres that were so obviously explored on Aeromantic. They're more combined here, so there's no clear dividing line between a more rock side and a more disco side, but the first half is definitely more rock and the second does shift more and more into pop, soul and disco. However, there's rock on the second side as well and disco on the first, the tracks blending in both directions. You Belong to the Night is Abba-esque disco meeting arena rock, but Midnight Marvelous is arena rock giving way to disco. I liked Aeromantic but I think I like this more because of that closer fusion.

It still surprises me that a band who sound like this would have such roots in metal, because this is a long way from what Strid and guitarist David Andersson play in Soilwork, or bass player Sharlee D'Angelo plays in Arch Enemy and Witchery. That extends to new fish John Lönnmyr, who joined in 2020 after Aeromantic; he also plays for melodic death/groove band Act of Denial, among others. It's refreshing to realise that musicians like these heard and clearly still have a passion for a band as utterly different as Cheap Trick, as that's who's channelled on the album closer, Reach Out, let alone whichever disco outfits they're emulating.

I know Cheap Trick but have almost zero depth in disco beyond my guilty pleasure of Boney M, so I couldn't tell you to whom they're paying homage on Chardonnay Nights. If we didn't catch the nod to disco on Midnight Marvelous, it's impossible to miss on this one, however much the melodies in it still remind of Mickey Thomas. I'm surprised they passed on the obvious opportunity to call this song Chardonnay Night Fever. I wonder how much the drums signal the direction, because it feels like they shift down a scale from analogue drumsticks on drums to digital electronic beats as the songs shift from rock to disco.

I often review albums that I highlight to my youngest son, especially on the thrash metal side, but this is one that I'll highlight to my better half, as she grew up in the States listening to most of the influences the Night Flight Orchestra obviously have. She probably saw most of them live and can probably tell me which funk and disco bands can be heard in the NFO sound too. Being English, I'm lacking in that era of American music, having largely grown up on homegrown bands instead, but hey, the Night Flight Orchestra aren't American either, even if they sound like it. They're from the Swedish town of Helsingborg, so I'm fascinated by how they first heard all this stuff. Certainly they know it well.

Cheap Trick - In Another World (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Pop Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 9 Apr 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

I'll be reviewing a few albums over the next few weeks that I never expected to see. This is one of them because I'd assumed Cheap Trick had ceased to be years ago, not through a split or any sort of musical differences but through retirement. They're close to the epitome of the band who show up in rotation on classic rock radio stations and you think to yourself, "I wonder whatever happened to them" as you can't name a single song by them that wasn't recorded well over thirty years ago.

Well, it seems that Cheap Trick have never gone away, maintaining a consistent line-up for almost half a century. Sure, lead vocalist Robin Zander didn't actually show up until 1974, making him the new fish in the same way that Dave Gilmour is the new fish in Pink Floyd. Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos were in place from from moment one in 1973, playing lead guitar and drums respectively, and they never left. Tom Petersson was also the founding bassist, but he did take a break in 1980, so causing the only line-up changes outside Zander replacing Randy Hogan at the mike when I was three.

Now, I should add that while Carlos is still the band's official drummer, that's only for legal reasons, as he's retired and he's the official drummer in the same way that James Patterson is the official author of all those books he farms out to others to write nowadays. Daxx Nielsen, son of Rick, is effectively their drummer and it's him playing drums here, whatever the legal paperwork says.

Wikipedia tells me that they've been recording a lot of albums too. I don't think I've heard anything of theirs since Lap of Luxury in 1988, which was their tenth studio release and their most successful after Dream Police in 1979. However, this is their twentieth, even though it's not particularly likely that I'd want to venture anywhere near it's predecessor, Christmas Christmas, which is exactly what you think it is. Yes, it's Cheap Trick covering all the rock Christmas classics, from Slade and Wizzard to the Kinks and the Ramones and, er, a Saturday Night Live skit co-written by Jimmy Fallon.

The good news is that this doesn't come anywhere near to how bad I expect that album to sound like. The bad news is that this doesn't live up to its beginning. I might disagree with them singing The Summer Looks Good on You because I'm a pasty Englishman living in the boiler room of Hell (Phoenix, AZ), but I like the song. It's a classic Cheap Trick song in that it's bubbly and vibrant and is never far away from a fresh hook but it keeps enough bite in the guitar for it to feel as much like an edgy rocker as the soft pop song it is under that leather jacket.

From there, however, it gets poppier and poppier. Quit Waking Me Up sounds good but it also sounds like it could be the backing for a cereal commercial. You just know that everyone involved in making it wore a big American smile as they did so. Boys & Girls & Rock n Roll is what the Faces would have been if they ditched all the debauchery and wrote theme songs for sitcoms instead. So It Goes starts out like a Harry Nilsson song and gradually morphs into a Beatles cover of a Harry Nilsson song. I don't think I can describe I'll See You Again better than as a lullabye.

And, while I can't write the album off for doing all that, because it's slick and pretty and commercial, I can't necessarily recommend it to Cheap Trick fans who want to rock out as much as they want to hear catchy hooks. Listen to the recent Jason Bieler album instead; he's mastered that Cheap Trick, er, trick of making singalong songs that still kick ass. However, there are moments.

Final Days boasts a decent riff, almost something Ritchie Blackmore might have written when he was in Deep Purple, and the song broods along nicely. Here's Looking at You is a little soft but it still does everything that we expect any Cheap Trick song to do. And Light Up the Fire is exactly what I want in a Cheap Trick album released in 2021. It's catchy as hell but it's also a guitar song, not just when the solo shows up but inherently throughout. It's the third single and I'm wondering if it should have been the first.

In other words, while this isn't close to being their best work and it would look uncomfortable next to Dream Police or At Budokan, it's not that bad an album. There are some real highlights and even the softer material isn't awful. It turns out that Cheap Trick aren't that bad at being the Beatles, or even, on Another World (Reprise), a rebellious David Bowie. I enjoyed it, though I doubt I'll ever come back to it again and, perhaps more importantly, I doubt it'll prompt me to check out any of the other eight non-Christmas albums they've released since I heard them last.

Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Feb 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've never been a big fan of the Foo Fighters, though this may well have converted me. I am, however, a big fan of their main man Dave Grohl, not just from what he did with Nirvana but with a variety of solo projects, such as Probot, and guest appearances, which are all over YouTube. He seems like he's a genuinely nice guy and someone who refuses to be pigeonholed because he appreciates a wide range of music and wants to explore it himself.

This is certainly a lot more poppy than I expected from the Foo Fighters. Grohl has compared it to a David Bowie album, Let's Dance, which is fair but limiting. There's plenty of David Bowie here, on the single Shame Shame and later songs like Chasing Birds and the title track, but it's not just Let's Dance. Shame Shame, for instance, sounds like Bowie covering Michael Jackson, which is an unusual sound I like a lot more than anything Jackson actually did.

It's infuriatingly catchy from moment one, with Making a Fire. This is power pop, a punky riff leading into Motown backing vocals and a stomping rock beat. It's the sort of song you find yourself singing along with on a first listen. Waiting on a War sounds Britpop to me, but it ramps up into another alt rock song, again like I expect from the Foo Fighters but poppier. Crucially, poppier here doesn't mean softer. This album has a big sound to it that trawls in soul, funk and pop to flavour its rock base.

A lot of it sounds familiar but in new forms. For instance, Cloudspotter kicks off with a sort of Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar, but stripped down and popped up. It turns into a heavier pop rock take on David Essex's Rock On with moments of UFO's Rock Bottom thrown in for good measure. The title track adds some reggae, along with some Mick Jagger and commercial era Tom Petty. Holding Poison is old school pop punk, like the Knack, and there's some of that on Making a Fire too. Oddest, No Son of Mine is an unusual song that sometimes feels like some hidden Metallica song translated into alt punk.

Most notably of all, it's all relentlessly upbeat. This was supposed to be released in 2020 but got put back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It feels like it's an antidote to COVID, because it's hard not to leave it happier and more energised than we came in. Everything's big and brash and memorable. I didn't get up and dance to it, the way I did to the new Korpiklaani album, but many listeners will. It's a very danceable release, far more than anything I've heard from the Foo Fighters before.

And this makes me want to go back and find out what I've missed. I've heard some of the major singles but they've never really prompted me to dig deeper. This does. After all, everyone who played on this has been the band for quite a while. Bassist Nate Mendel joined in 1995, drummer Taylor Hawkins in 1997 and guitarist Chris Shiflett in 1999. Pat Smear was there at the beginning but left for a while; he returned in 2010. Even new fish Rami Jaffee, on keyboards, toured with them for a dozen years before officially joining in 2017. This can't have come out of nowhere.

Enuff Z'Nuff - Brainwashed Generation (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Power Pop
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Jul 2020
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I've always had a soft spot for Enuff Z'nuff, who are still struggling three decades on against many of us thinking that they're a hair metal band. They aren't and never really were, however it seemed back in 1989 when they put out their first album. They prefer us to call what they do power pop and it's not easy to disagree with that because it's getting completely obvious. The bands that spring to mind as I listen to this aren't Poison, Guns n' Roses or Faster Pussycat, even if they'll be touring with the latter next yer. They're Cheap Trick, ELO, Queen and, at the root of the band's sound, the Beatles.

The hardest rocker here is Drugland Weekend, which chugs along nicely and features a powerful solo I believe comes courtesy of Ace Frehley. He's certainly here somewhere, as are drummers Mike Portnoy and Daxx Nielsen, son of Rick and touring member of Cheap Trick in his own right. Original guitarist Donnie Vie is here too, albeit only on one song, which I believe is Strangers in My Head, so this really isn't a reunion for the fans to leap too hard towards, even if it's a start.

The band nowadays are founder member Chip Z'nuff on bass and, as of 2016, lead vocals, with a trio of other musicians who are much more recent acquisitions. Lead guitarist Tory Stoffregen has a decade with the band, albeit in two stints. Drummer Dan Hill joined in 2016. Alex Kane only joined last year, on rhythm guitar and keyboards, so wasn't on 2018's Diamond Boy, but a long time ago, back in 1987 before the first album, he spent a year on lead guitar.

The whole album is solid, because Chip Z'nuff has always written catchy songs and the nine songs here are no exception. The only forgettable piece is the forty second intro. Once we're in Fatal Distraction, we realise that nobody else writes songs this catchy nowadays and how good they are needs to factor in how they stay in our heads. This one could be up there with Cheap Trick classics, though Z'nuff isn't remotely as emphatic a vocalist as Robin Zander. I Got My Money Where My Mouth Is follows suit and we're off and running in style.

While there isn't a huge gap between Cheap Trick, ELO and Queen, differing uses of vocal harmonies being a good part of it, Enuff Z'Nuff do explore that gap. It's All in Vain, which I believe is the song to feature Portnoy on drums, plays out differently to the Cheap Trick-infused earlier tracks. This one is a Saigon Kick kind of take on ELO for most of its running time but there are quintessential Beatles bits and it ends up very much like Queen. Most of the later songs also play in ELO/Beatles territory, with Queen never too far behind.

All in all, this is very likeable material. It's soft and melodic and catchy, with enough of a back end to mean that it's still rock music rather than straight pop. That's a neat riff on Winding Road to wrap up the album, but however seventies rock it seems, what plays around it is softer. Imagine Joe Walsh in a guest guitarist slot for the Beatles. Drugland Weekend rocks. The only valid thing I can throw out on the negative side is that these songs might bite more with a dedicated vocalist. Chip Z'nuff was the bass player and songwriter long before he ever stepped up to the mike and he has a passive voice for a lead singer.

Depending on how you count, this is either Enuff Z'Nuff's tenth studio album or their fifteenth. Yeah, that's a big difference. It's because they put out a lot of archive material that was technically new and relabelled at least one non-Enuff Z'Nuff album under that name. It's not been a smooth ride for them, even though they ought to be much better known than they are. Somehow I know that this album will not suddenly catapult them to superstardom, but it really ought to.