We’ve heard it a million times: rock & roll is dead. The idea of using three or four chords to bash out feel-good riffola with lyrics that commemorate sex, hard times, triumph and heartbreak is so passé it makes skiffle seem revelatory. The pundits who endlessly push this notion point to the charts for support – if the almost sublimely derivative JET is all we’ve got to prove the form’s vitality, we are indeed in deep tiger poop.
Real music fans (i.e. the ones who will actually seek out the good stuff, instead of just passively accepting what the radio and Hollywood song placement execs tell them is worth hearing) know the death of rock & roll has been highly exaggerated. It doesn’t take much scratching at the surface of the music industry to reveal a plethora of good-to-great rock & roll bands. It may be more of an underground phenomenon in an age when hip-hop, electrodancepop and über-ironic indie rock rule, but it’s there, it’s vital and it’s coming to your town, baby.
Which brings us to LIONS IN THE STREET. A gang of rock & roll true believers in whose veins run powerful strains of the ROLLING STONES, the FACES, the FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS and CHUCK BERRY, the Vancouver quartet lays down a supreme riff-rocking groove on its self-titled debut album as if it has no choice. “Already Gone,” “Shangri-La” and “Hey Hey Arlene” rip-roar with the skill of veterans and the enthusiasm of teenagers. “Lady Blue” and “How Could I Be So Blind” tear hearts from sleeves and lay them, still beating, at the feet of the nearest maiden. “Truer Now” incorporates country music without being remotely trendy or condescending about it. “You’re Gonna Lose” blends in the blues without succumbing to blues rock clichés. Recorded mostly live in a room, the tracks crackle with the kind of energy you can only get from musicians actually interacting with each other. There’s nothing self-consciously retro about Lions in the Street – this is a groove and a sound that’s completely organic, played with fire and conviction in the manner of young men who have no choice but to rock it like they walk it.
There’s innovation and there’s carrying on the tradition. The latter can be a refuge for lazy artists who find it easier to simply ape the past, but in the hands of the kind of desperate, passionate musicians like the boys in Lions in the Street, it’s damn near revolution.
http://www.lionsinthestreet.com
