I doubt they’d thank me for it, but THE BELLRAYS are fast approaching what the majority of people in this ghastly industry would probably refer to as ‘veteran’ status. Having recorded their debut album as far back as 1990, this Californian crew have since established themselves as one of the USA’S most ferocious garage rock bands with a back catalogue to sever vital tendons for.
With that in mind, you’d think they might want to put their feet up for a while, yet their new album ‘Black Lightning’ (their debut for Parisian label Fargo Records) is enough to shame a band half their vintage. It’s lean, hungry, breathtakingly powerful and simply haemorrhages cracking tunes.
Much of The Bellrays critical acclaim has, of course, been laid at the feet of their vocalist, the uber-afro-d Lisa Kekaula, and ‘Black Lightning’ confirms just how special she really is. Because the band’s regular stock in trade is their uncompromising raunch, journalists regularly marry the names of the most respected of Soul divas to the likes of Black Flag when describing The Bellrays. To put my own two pennorth into the tin, the ‘Rocket to Russia’-style ramalama of ‘Power to Burn’ makes me think of Tina Turner fronting The Ramones, but really such comparisons barely scratch the surface of what this band are capable of.
If you’re looking for searing Garage-Rock riffs and rubber-burnin’ rhythms, you’ve certainly come to the right place. On the heat-seeking title track, Kekaula howls “I am a new sensation, I’m on fire!” while the band switch up to a dangerous fifth, clearing the corners on two wheels. The likes of ‘Living A Lie’ and ‘On Top’ rev along in the slipstream, while the swaggering ‘Everybody Get Up’ makes like the party anthem you’ve always wanted to get loose to and the MC5-meets-So.Cal –hardcore-whirlwind of ‘Hell on Earth’ is simply staggering.
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Blinding though these tracks are, however, it’s when The Bellrays slip out of the Garage Punk shackles that they really shine. ‘Anymore’ is the sound of chromatic Pop-Rock with the band really stretching while Kekaula delivers a smoky and delicious, Motown-style purr of a vocal. It’s tremendous, though arguably usurped by the nervy, metronomic Soul of ‘Sun Comes Down’ where honeyed strings, a heavenly Kekaula vocal and a compact Gospel-style choir set up something truly slinky and transcendent. It’s quite possibly the album’s highest peak, though ‘The Way’ – with its’ warm organ, clipped Steve Cropper-style guitars and another soul-caressing vocal from Kekaula – runs it bloody close and brings the record to a suitably exhilarating conclusion.
Long-time purveyors of quality Garage Punk’n’Soul, The Bellrays seem to have been poised as ‘the band expected to’ for the best part of a decade and it’s difficult to pinpoint why they haven’t (as yet) connected with a much larger audience. However, instead of pondering that into the ground, I’m going to trumpet ‘Black Lightning’ as both their finest album yet and one of the year’s crucial Rock’n’Roll releases. And then I’m going to play it again. And again. And again.
The Bellrays online
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