When Enuff Z’Nuff are at the top of their game, they’re a fantastic band. Their first three albums (‘Enuff Z’Nuff’, ‘Strength’ and ‘Animals With Human Intelligence’ rank among the best melodic rock and power pop discs ever. From that point on, you’ll find good songs scattered throughout their next half a dozen releases, but the cut and paste nature of these can be a little frustrating. From 1999’s ‘Paraphernalia’ onwards, the band seemed to settle into a pattern of bulking out “new” releases with bits and pieces from their extensive vaults. Their 2000 release ’10’ is a blatant example of this, having been pieced together from recordings made over the previous half a decade. Just one listen to ‘There Goes My Heart’ might even be enough to convince some listeners that the song had been kicking around even longer, such is its quality (being comparable to the best bits of the 1985 demos and the EZ’N debut album). Their 2004 release ‘?’ was even more scattershot, featuring new songs alongside a bunch of material dating back to the ‘Animals…’ sessions in 1992. Frankly, if the songs weren’t good enough in the 90s, they certainly felt like third division off cuts over a decade later.
Tag Archives: retro
Download: WATTS – Seventeen / When The Party Ends
For a band who claimed they were “All Done With Rock N Roll” as 2017 drew to a close, Watts continued to keep themselves busy. A digital single, ‘Queens’ followed in October 2018 and a new EP ‘Breaking Glass’ kicked off 2019 in their typically retro rock ‘n’ roll tradition.
It’s been a year since the world last heard from Boston’s underground heroes, but they’ve returned with a couple of new tracks that you can download on a “pay what you want” basis.
Listen: Norway’s Mayflower Madame stream new single
Ahead of their second album’s release, Norwegian indie/goth band Mayflower Madame are streaming their new single, ‘Vultures’.
Taking a pinch of Jesus & Mary Chain and a huge influence from Bauhaus and ‘First, Last & Always’ era Sisters of Mercy, the track really delivers in terms of mechanical rhythms, cold riffs and a brilliant alt-pop darkness. Everything has been recycled with so much love, it could even pass as authentic find from a vault of rare 80s alternative music.
FOUND MISSING? – Pretend EP
Essex band Found Missing? released their debut EP in the summer of 2019. While the band were a relatively new arrival on the UK rock scene at that point, their members had been working the live circuit for some time as members of Cosmic Joker, Twelvepointhead and La Muerte.
La Muerte were fantastic. They left the world too prematurely with one EP that fused elements of punk, hardcore and a debt to early Killing Joke. If you’re approaching this band expecting more of the same you’re surely going to be disappointed, but what Found Missing? do, they often do very well. Opting for something very retro, the band takes a huge hard rock swagger, injects it with a love of funk and then dirties it up a little, ending up sounding like an early 90s funk metal band covering tracks from Bush’s US million seller ‘Sixteen Stone’. Obviously, at the time of release, it sounds rather…out of time, but for fans of that sort of thing, it very much fills a musical hole.
STATE COWS – Challenges
State Cows have been making excellent westcoast/yacht rock music since 2010. Always unashamed in their retro-ness, the band have delighted fans across the world with various self-penned homages to Toto, Steely Dan and late 70s Doobie Brothers. There’s nothing obviously original about the Cows’ choice of style, but there’s no denying they do it better than most…and even after so many years, the fact that this most American of sounds was perfected somewhere in Sweden is a fact that still amazes.