Big choruses, vocal gymnastics and meaty, over-the-top solos? Few would hold it against you if you thought you had stepped into a time machine and wound the clock back to July 2003, the date that saw The Darkness' "Permission To Land" well and truly bulldoze its way into the public's consciousness with their brash heavy rock. Some may not appreciate the comparison (particularly considering the Lowestoft guys' dire second album and cocaine fuelled breakdowns) but in spirit, Foxy Shazam are channelling a similar force. Even the respective front covers for "Permission To Land" and "Foxy Shazam" display a similarly playful, ahem, "cheekiness".
But whilst the English band looked to Van Halen, Whitesnake and Led Zeppelin for their fusion of grandiose hair metal and lick-heavy pomp-rock, Foxy Shazam appear to digging a little deeper in pop music history, mining the rich seam laid down by Queen and Elton John, with a bit of Meat Loaf thrown in for good measure. That's not to suggest that the band are lacking for grandiose, guitar-heavy tracks, though. "Oh Lord" (a recent UK single) is a feedback drenched power ballad, soaked through with main man Eric Nally's flamboyant verve, whilst Justin Hawkins' presence on "Count Me Out" is enough to secure crashing dual guitars, squealing string bends and a high-octane solo that drags The Darkness "sound" back into 2010, almost seven years after "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" lodged itself in the charts. In a similar vein, "Unstoppable", a motivational track big and chunky enough to receive a playlisting during the Super Bowl, is, as you might expect, a pumped-up, sweat-soaked, chant-a-thon, gloriously overwrought and about as subtle as a three hundred and fifty pound defensive end pummelling your face into the ground.
But whilst they're clearly better at dodging the "novelty band" stick with which The Darkness were repeatedly beaten, it's safe to say that subtlety is not in great supply on "Foxy Shazam". "Intro/Bombs Away" breaks out from a barked introduction (no shit), complete with ridiculous rock trumpet (courtesy of Alex North) and primal scream vocal histrionics (courtesy of Nally), into a brassy, boogie-piano fuelled rockathon. It's bombastic, bold and breathless, and sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the album.
But like The Darkness, beneath all this loud and proudly OTT noise, is an at times wry (but mostly OTT) lyrical content. "Wanna-Be Angel" admits "I want my friends to think I'm awesome/I want this world to think I care/I don't care at all", before going on to decry the hipster phenomenon (their music is probably too insouciant and fun-loving for them anyway) and exploding into a toboggan ride of cymbals, flurried piano and trumpet fanfare. "Second Floor", a (potential) suicide song that paradoxically sounds more like a triumphal beginning than a bleak denouement, opens with "Soon as they fall asleep I'll be out of here/I'll put on my shoes and I'll sneak to the window/brush the bird shit off the ledge/and shimmy shimmy off, shimmy shimmy". Further down, the black Latin soul of "The Only Way To My Heart..." sees Nally leer filthily "I was thinking of sex and/all the nasty things we do", before filling in the title's blanks with the darkly withering dismissal, "The only way to my heart is.../with an axe".
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And from devilish Latin jazz to beat-box-laden pop, Foxy Shazam make another diversion. "Connect", straight out of the Michael Jackson manual, comes complete with gospel choir, a deep bass beat laying down a hefty funk, and a uplifting chorus just itching for the deceased King of Pop's fleet-footed touch. It's an unexpected but impressively realised side-step and says a lot for the band's "genre-defying" music.
Unsurprisingly, Nally has frequently declared that the band will settle for nothing less than a "biggest band in the world" tag. With such grandiose intentions, heroic pomp, and ridiculous facial hair, as well as a reputedly mind-blowing live show, they certainly have the balls to mount a challenge on the title. But then so did The Darkness. Only time will tell. For the moment, let's just say that Foxy Shazam's self-titled major label debut is an enjoyable album of feel-good - sometimes preposterously pompous - rock and pic-and-mix, larger-than-life pop. The rest will sort itself out.
Foxy Shazam on MySpace
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