The aptly monikered THE SOUND EXPLOSION despatch their heavy duty pay-loads of noise from a base outside Newcastle. Formed in 2002 this quartet of punk/blues hipsters certainly look the part: cocky swaggering youth bound together by raw energy and a love of The Riff.
Overshadowed by The MC5 (one of them even has the Rob Tyner hair), The Stooges, Jon Spencer and present day Nord-niks The Hives their eponymous debut pants and pouts admirably but doesn’t do nearly enough to escape its easy-to-spot influences. When it works as on ‘Traveller Man’, ‘Street Freak’, ‘Living In Caves’ and ‘Time After Time’ they capture the idea of kicking out The Jamms but elsewhere they place impassable dams across the creative flow rendering sections of the album ordinary, hackneyed and dangerously close to pub-rock.
At the risk of damning them with faint praise at least they sound like they mean it which in an age of poseurs and dilettantes is a genuine blessing. I’d warrant they play a blinder live as well. They’ve clearly immersed themselves well in their influences but they’re at risk of drowning in them, despite the obvious skill on display in creating a big fat cacophony of electric blues.
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I want to like THE SOUND EXPLOSION more because I like what they like but I’m itching to play the originals rather than admire the efforts of these new kids on the block. And if there's a suggestion of reverse ageism in that remark all I can say in my defence is that you never truly get over your first love.
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