Considering what they achieved with THE VERVE, you'd excuse Messrs. Jones and Tong buckling under the weight of expectation that will be inevitably be forced down on their new vehicle THE SHINING.
"So what?" they grunt, light up a spliff and poke us squarely in the eyes with "Quicksilver", their debut single, which - despite its' low-key 1,000 copy introduction - positively oozes with the defiant, swaggering hard rock class we've come to expect since, ooh, "A Northern Soul" came into our orbit at least.
"Quicksilver" goes for the jugular and then some, landing somewhere fantastic between OASIS and LED ZEP at their meanest. As soon as new boy Dan McBean detonates that initial guitar riff, all the hallmarks of impending greatness are being buffed up. Jones' bass and Mark Heaney's disco Bonham drums lever up a rhythm like a rising fever and vocalist Duncan Baxter bares his chest with aplomb. Can't understand the Ian Brown comparisons, though. I detect a lineage back to Robert Plant, but little of Monkey Boy's off-key waffle.
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Arguably, B-side "Dum Dum" betters it. Jones has spoken of his love for CAN in recent interviews and "Dum Dum" finds him and Heaney locking into a sinewy groove worthy of CZUKAY and LEIBEZEIT circa "Ege Bamyasi", while the chilling samples and Baxter's mantra-like "Show me the way to heaven!" catchline send this into shamanic frenzy.
Expectations exceeded, then. Oh come on, you didn't really think they'd let us down, did you?
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