Energetic Texas studio Sugar Hill (producer Dan Workman) has pumped up middlingy good rock band SOUTHERN BACKTONES to sound like something in the acres of space and time between The Cult and U2. It’s a very big space, and an even bigger time.
On standout tracks "They'll Never Come Between Our Love" and opener "Forever" there are reprises of that eight to the bar chord blast that makes "Sea Shell Sanctuary" such a recognisable anthem. Elsewhere there is diligent playing and knowing production work that only lacks original character to make it into a seriously viable proposition.
While the general construction is sharply professional it is very hard to point to a hook, a chord change or a chorus like that could start to persuade me to recommend this album to you. "Forever" starts well, with that clear guitar on a falling sequence of three chords , nanga nanga … nanga nanga' …, naga naga naga naga that should then surge upwards. But it goes down. What an anti-climax! And it’s only bar two. After that I really got bored. I wish this wasn't true. But we need a long long break from the plangent guitar-based mournful song of average dimensions. Even the odd brilliant one from U2 now has to fight it’s way up through the sedimentary layers of its great predecessors to make an impression.
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Hank Schyma provides and sings the songs. His voice is pretty good. The words are a little odd. Like the music, they approximate something that should work, but taken together they don't really add up to the full picnic. Where Bono sketches an accurate outline of a mood or a theme, Schyma pencils in distracting details that drag the listener to a confused halt. "Judas trio, drop your tampons"; "your new cheekbones bring out your eyes"; "if you were the station wagon/crayola art on the fridge type, then don’t you think your goldfish – it would still be alive?" It’s lame stuff, meandering off into generalised contempt for Schyma's enemies: "They're [sic] corpses spill blood, their voices nullified./Forsaken swine./They had it coming."
Good though they are, Southern Backtones are going to have to fight pretty hard to find their audience on this showing. The publicity blurb suggests "Filed under: Rock & Pop >> British Trad Rock, Indie Rock, British Invasion, Early British Pop/Rock, Retro Rock. With the Mission, presumably.
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