Album Review: Neverland Ranch Davidians - "Neverland Ranch Davidians"

 

Well I think we can certainly agree on one thing - these L.A. scuzzballs have definitely picked one of the coolest band names we've seen at Nite Songs for a while. The Neverland Ranch Davidians have been picking up a fair bit of good press across the board with this album so we thought that we'd stick our heads in to see what the fuss is all about.

I have to be honest, the first impressions weren't exactly promising - opening track The Gospel is a drony four minute instrumental which seems to basically consist of a three note Kyuss riff being recycled over and again and could really have been done at being kept to just a minute or two. However, the scuzzy Danko Jones rock 'n' roll of Rat Patrol kicks this one into gear properly with its fuzzed up guitar sound and hyperactive vocals getting this one going properly. Fat Back conjures up the weird image of James Brown jamming with Mudhoney with its funky rhythms and grungy guitar sound - an odd mix but it definitely works.

One thing that becomes clear quite quickly is that this is one hell of a sonically schizophrenic band - Aqua Velveteen goes into early Queens of the Stone Age territory with its woozy lurching riff before Liquor Store is a frenetic slice of garage punk which swings this one completely in the opposite direction. Solid Monkey sounds like a really evil version of Vintage Trouble before Butts In My Beer goes into almost psychobilly territory, Boys Don't Cry swaggers through on a lurching leering riff and Hen House sounds like a soul power Stooges. Stigmata might just be the strongest track on here with its sinister woozy guitar riff and preacher man vocals before the political anger of Knee On My Neck sounds like the White Stripes being chased and run down by an 18 wheeler truck and the call and response r'n'b soulfulness of I Believe To My Soul close the album off in good style. 

Neverland Ranch Davidians definitely deserve credit for serving up a varied album here - this debut swings all over the shop taking in influences from seemingly anywhere and everywhere and it makes for a captivating listen. It's probably more one for Nite Songs readers who lean towards the scuzzy grungy end of the stuff we cover here but there's no denying its scope and ambition. With a bit of added experience under their belt, there's no telling what NLD could be capable of going forward.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sounds From The Junkshop #18 - Heavy Stereo

Image
  "So here's to a happy landing, wherever we're fallin' to..."  - Heavy Stereo  - Cartoon Moon , 1996 Let's be honest, it all started to go wrong for Oasis when they started to swallow the "new Beatles" hype wholesale. Well that and when they started developing a worrying predilection for tedious blues jams but that's a whole other story. I blame Paul Weller meself. The thing about Definitely Maybe was, y'see, yes there was definitely a Beatles influence there (I mean on the likes of Live Forever and Up In The Sky you can't really miss it) but there was so much more going on there as well. On that one, the Gallaghers owed arguably more to the '70s glam stomp of T-Rex and Slade ( Cigarettes and Alcohol for the former, Rock 'n' Roll Star for the latter) or the scuzzy sneer of the Pistols ( Bring It On Down ) than they did to the Fab Four. Their critics may have derided them as such but a Lennon & McCartney tribute band ...
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

Sounds From The Junkshop #46 - Bis

Image
  "If it's not worth pretending then I don't wanna know..."  - Bis   - Eurodisco There's an argument that we should possibly have covered Bis a bit earlier in SFTJ some time around the entries for 1996 or so rather than now as we enter 1999 as this was when they had their biggest success and their five minutes of infamy. Bursting on the scene just as Britpop was at its peak, their none more lo-fi aesthetic which harked back to a decade before brought them plaudits and derision in pretty much equal amounts. I remember my younger sister absolutely loved them and I ended up borrowing her copy of the group's debut album New Transistor Heroes  mainly just to see what the fuss was about. Although it wasn't deserving of some of the scathing reviews it got, I thought it was good but not brilliant. Certainly Bis were very much a Marmite band with the keyboard bleeps, wannabe-cutesy lyrics about sweetshops etc and screechy vocals putting a lot of people off but in a...
Read more