Digipack bonus DVD
1. Red (Video Clip)*
2. The Making of Big Red
3. Meantime (Video Clip)*
4. The Making of Meantime
5. Mr Regulator (Video Clip)*
6. The Making of Mr Regulator
7. Doll Size (Video Clip)*
8. Honesty (Video Clip)
9. Silence Now (Video Clip)
* Taken from the Debut Album “Scatter The Crow”
Band:
Tommy Gleeson (Guitar & Vocals)
Toshi Ogawa (Bass)
Mark Verney (Lead Guitar)
Jason Bowld (Drums)
Discography:
Scatter The Crow (2008)
Guests:
Info
Honestly video Directed by Sitcom Soldiers
Good Advice video Filmed and edited by James Fage
Released 18/4-2011
Reviewed 29/4-2011
Links:
slavestogravity.com
myspace
spv
I see it as three possible ways to look at britpop. Either you see it as an unusually intricate rock music without coherent melodies or as absolutely uninteresting or as the best thing in the world. When Oasis released their pretty amazingly well selling album 'What's the Story (Morning Glory)' in 1995 which has - believe it or not - sold enough to qualify for 14 times platinum status (!) in their home country, England, the britpop became popular to the common people. Officially this and the sales from the rest of the world gives them and this album a fiftieth position on the greatest selling albums in the world record with more than 22 million sold albums (which places them before the best selling albums from artists like Aerosmith and Dido). What followed next we all know with boy-bands, solo singing babes and music competition winners. Perhaps what we need then is a new wave of britpop to find back to the much better popular music that were before this? Slaves to Gravity do britpop in a 2010-matter, which is harder, thougher and somewhat more coherent in the melodies than its original but otherwise just as unpredictable as it's always been.
The songs on this album includes titles like Dumb, Misery Pills and This Time it's Terminal which all makes me start to wonder if the britpop of the 2010-decade will be poisoned by the emo-movement. However, these British folk-music inspired songs, the garage-feel and the street though sound that I haven't heard since 4 Non Blondes big hit What's Up, from 1993 (the timing coincident can't be a coincident). Overall the feeling is that this is a pretty grand kind of rock music scaled down to a very simple rock music. It's absolutely not an over-ambitious album, instead 'Underwaterouterspace' feels close at hand - like the working class England or coal mine Wales with brick houses and driving a Mini. The great success Kaiser Chiefs had a few years back is evidence enough, I think, that this might just work for the Brits. Slaves to Gravity are somewhat heavier and perhaps a bit less melodic than Kaiser Chiefs and to all of you who now look like question marks this means that Slaves to Gravity is a band that sing together in the pretty catchy choruses with funk-inspired instruments bending their strains with just as much working class feel as The Beatles.
The introducing song, called Good Advice, uses keyboards but is actually the only song where this is used (at least clearly). The second song, which you can find a video for below this review is simply a straight to the point rock song with captivating guitar lines and a surprisingly straight on chorus. All the twelve songs are short and simple and could probably all potentially become singles (in fact, two of them have already been so - the two just mentioned). However, the total playing time with twelve full songs rounds up at over 47 minutes, all though it feels a lot shorter, and beside this the final song is also a bonus only for Europeans, so the total time is four minutes shorter if you read this elsewhere. Now and then the album becomes nothing but rock music and sometimes it's even balancing to be rock ´n´ roll with more traditional melodies and music that isn't taking detours but keeps to the point with catchy choruses and leading guitars, all though I'd say most of the album consist of pretty strange guitar lines and melodies that ends up more or less as where time takes them instead of some sort of master plan.
Personally, I never see the apple fall to the point where I wanted it to be. It's good music, nice and relaxed and well played. But it never really peaks. It's a good album, but that's it. More is hard to say about it. I guess time will give us the answer to if Slaves to Gravity ends up as a new Oasis or more like an apple crushed by the ground - but I think Slaves to Gravity is a name most of us will hear about sooner or later so it might be a good idea to check the band out before you will have opinions forced on you and see for yourself what it's all about.
HHHHHHH
