Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Album Review: The Jackets - Queen of the Pill

The Jackets 
Queen of the Pill
**** out of *****

The three piece Bern based band The Jackets newest release Queen of the Pill on Voodoo Rhythm Records is a rollicking collection of fuzzed up garage rock with splashes of psych, punk and 50's pop, making for a confident statement of the bands rock and roll intent. 

Coming from Switzerland the trio (Jack Torera, Chris Rosales and Samuel "Schmidi" Schmidiger) are locked in from the beginning as their leather jacket clad rock blasts out. Front woman Torera's vocals warble and soar through distortion on the tempo shifting opener "Dreamer" which bangs and rattles, stopping and starting with glee.

There are layers of sound and shimmering throughout the record as Nene Baratto and King Khan helped out with production, but the core of the band is the killer low end of Rosales and Schmidiger as they lay the ground work for Torera to shine. A perfect example of their strength is album highlight "What About You" which slams heavy with rhythmic power while a layered guitar solo adds a Nuggets feel to the number as it closes. The title tack also uses a pumping bass and drum lead while a spacey guitars swirl with more distortion and a exploratory jam feeling.

"Steam Queen" uses a crunchy riff and some 50's pop semblance to mix things up before the Jefferson Airplane sounding "Floating Alice" injects Eastern tinges and laid back psychedelia to the garage rock party. Both are fine tracks, but the band works best when it picks up the tempo."Losers Lullaby" does just that and is a dose of punk energy while Torera's six strings sound as if they are destroying speakers on "Don't Leave Me Alone" which comes complete with shaking tambourines and backing vocals.

Queen of the Pill wraps up with two tracks cut from the same sonic cloth as "Deeper Way" and "Be Myself" are parts one and two of a roaring hip shaking groove machine which motors along getting the late night mod dance shindig started. There is not a weak link among the ten retro rocking tracks presented here as The Jackets dark star is clearly on the rise.
___________________________________________
Support the band, buy the record, stream it on bandcamp or below and peep some video:

No comments:

Post a Comment