Funk metal, psychedelic rock, call it what you will. Three albums and it was all over. Better to burn out than to fade away.
Rising from the ashes etc etc, Swedish cult funksters,
Electric Boys - Connie Bloom, Andy Christell, Franco Santunione and Niclas Sigevall are reportedly recording a new album.
To celebrate that decidedly noteworthy news, Universal Records have released this best of, titled '
Now Dig This'. Fans of the band will know why.
This was a sub genre that few musicians had previously tackled, with perhaps the remarkable exception of Stevie Salas.
The 1989 release of the relatively innovative '
Funk O Metal Carpet Ride' paralleled the rise of the Dan Reed Network, who were marketing a similar product. (Closely followed by Max White/Martin's Its Alive in 1993).
While DRN's music was a closely focused, funky variant of arena rock, The
Electric Boys' music resisted any kind of linear development.
At times it lurched from the swooning, spaced out psychedelia of the Fab Four, to the monochrome, drug culture creations of Jefferson Airplane.
The result was eager acceptance by the critics and confused looks from the record buying public. There were enough enlightened rock fans on this side of the Atlantic to propel the album high into the European charts. But only enough of their US counterparts for it to scrape into the subterranean levels of the Billboard Hot 100.
1992's '
Groovus Maximus' was an even more accomplished funk metal album, but dwindling interest forced the band into more of a generic hard rock direction with 1994's
'Freewheelin'.
Not surprisingly then, the bulk of the material on 'Now Dig This' comes from those first two monumental albums.
'
All Lips N'Hips' was the one that secured the band heavy MTV rotation, and thus at least 15 minutes was a given. This track is all that its title suggests. A huge, glammy, dancerock groove. (the album closes with a pumped up, 2009 remix).
'Psychedelic Eyes' and '
Electrified' are funky, melodic rock workouts, igniting in a blitz of razoring axe solos and bluesy riffs.
The balladic
'Dying To Be Loved' starts out like Lou Reed, then accelerates into an epic, raucously romantic, string driven chorus with Bloom proving himself as a passionate, expressive vocalist.
'Who Are You' and '
The Change' show the laidback, psychedelic pop side of the band, with a few funky licks thrown into the mix for good measure. While '
Groovus Maximus' and '
The Groover' do just what it says on the tracklist.
Few would have expected a bunch of funk rock songs from a short lived European band to be as structurally and emotionally expansive as this.
Track this one down before you buy the new one.
Written by
Brian Friday, July 10, 2009
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