Genres: Rock, Punk
Spotify: Yessum
Preview: Myspace
Foxy Shazam has been an ever-mutating band and along with that is a polarization of their listeners. Either people hate them or they love them, or they love their old sound and hate their new sound, or they love their new sound and hate their new sound, or they like all of their music for a different variety of reasons. I fall into the last group. When I was first introduced to them, they were fresh off releasing Flamingo Trigger; an experimental post-hardcore effort with a surreal mix of piano and pop elements at times. Even way back then Eric was a focal point of this band. His visceral screaming, catchy singing and his quirky oddities not only fit in with the experimental style of music but you knew before even seeing this band that this guy could put on a show.
As they continued to release records the began to focus less and less on the hardcore focus to rock n' roll and eventually even glam rock. Their last album was almost an epitome of this glam rock phase, but I still found that I was incredibly hooked on the songs and found myself singing along.
Soon, there were rumblings of a new album. And I caught the video for the single off this album, "I Like It" and while I thought it was funny, overall I thought it was too gimmicky and not really a song that I liked. So, I had this bad feeling that maybe they were just plain wearing off on me.
I listened to this album once and wasn't sure how I felt about it. But I also felt that same way after listening to their last album for the first time. I have revisited it again, and now I am finding that I love the songs just like I did from their last album (Except "I Like It", I just don't like it).
There are still the strong glam rock influence and I feel like Eric really wants to be Freddie Mercury at times, maybe a little too much. But, what amazes is me is that he still does things to his voice that totally catches me off guard in a great way. For example, the screech in 1:56 into "Holy Touch" (Great song by the way), and the squeaky vocals in "Wasted Feelings". As I said, the whole Queen thing is there, but I feel like this album is deviated from their last album in that this is less glam rock and more just rock n roll (Hence the name, Church of Rock N Roll).
Even if you don't enjoy Foxy Shazam's music, I challenge people to go see them live. It's a freakshow (cigarette eating, ceiling hanging), comedy show (Eric's stories inbetween songs), and rock show rolled into one.
Listen Here:
No comments:
Post a Comment