Album Review: Daniel Wylie's Cosmic Rough Riders - "Atoms And Energy"

 

As I mentioned when I did their Sounds From The Junkshop entry a few days ago, the Cosmic Rough Riders were one of the more underrated indie bands of the millennium years and while researching said article, it came to my attention that frontman Daniel Wylie (who fronted the band on their pre-breakthrough albums and their Poptones debut Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine) has put his own line-up together in recent years and that an album was now out.

As you'd maybe expect, Atoms And Energy is a fairly sedate effort mainly led by Wylie's acoustic guitar although it doesn't stop the odd curveball sneaking in - opener The Bruises And The Blood starts off as a dark nocturnal lament about domestic violence before suddenly going all Beatles/Beach Boys psychedelic midway through. It's second song, the wistful Heaven's Waiting Room, which mourns the passing of time over a gentle melody, that kind of sums this album up better though as does the Lennonesque God Is Nowhere.

Unfortunately, it's this lack of pace that's the main minus point with this album - it's a perfectly nice and relaxing Sunday afternoon listen (which helpfully was when I listened to it myself!) but you do sometimes wish that Wylie would up the tempo slightly just to vary things up a bit. I mean, yeah, I know Cosmic Rough Riders were never the most punky of bands but at least songs like Melanie and The Pain Inside had a bit of a kick behind the chorus whereas here it's mostly sleepy acousticisms with only the spiteful Ruth The Truth really straying from the format too much.

Overall, Atoms And Energy is a perfectly pleasant album for quiet times listening but I just kind of wish a couple of the tracks varied from the gentle Byrdsian formula a little bit more than they do. Still, for hungover mornings when anything too noisy sounds like the clanking of Hades, it's pretty much ideal.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A brief return from the dead...

Image
  Yup, we're back. Don't all get excited at once. I’d been toying with the idea of doing an end of year list again this year and after a lot of umming and aahing eventually decided to go for it. As with last year, inevitably there were bumps along the way. As of the start of December, I thought this list would be around 40 albums but inevitably reading other people’s lists pointed me towards a bunch of stuff that had passed me by earlier in the year. Plus of course there’s always a few teasing buggers who put stuff out at the last possible moment. So 40 became 50 which became 60 which finally became 70. You lucky people. Actually though, reading through this list, the main thing that strikes me is that I think this might be the most musically varied end of year list that Nite Songs has ever done. From gentle acoustics through acclaimed indie veterans to punk thrash and good old fashioned scuzzy rock ‘n’ roll via some decidedly unexpected diversions (industrial folk music? Check...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure, ...
Read more

Album Review: The Fades - "Night Terrors"

Image
  Hailing from South London, the Fades are gaining a reputation of one of the premier garage rock bands in the capital these days and, as with a few albums we've reviewed in these webpages of late, Night Terrors  was written during the lockdown as it was a recurring feature of life for the band's frontman Dave during the lockdown. As befits its title and subject matter, Night Terrors  is an off-kilter effort which might take a few listens to get into but rewards those who persevere with it. Certainly, the discordant vocals and guitars often give the impression of the whole operation being on the verge of collapse on the likes of The Pessimist  and Known It All Along  while Lost My Job  goes into XTC/Nightingales style post-punk territory. However, the likes of People In General  show that they can rein the weirdness in and build up an intriguing multi-part epic which starts off as tuneful new wave before drifting into a nightmarish state-of-the-nation ...
Read more