Source: Album Artwork
Sometimes you hear a record and think it would of been much better if only it was a bunch of songs lighter. The opposite is true here with this new self titled EP from the UK’s own 1968. It is only three tracks long but the tracks you get presented here are nothing short of dirty, fuzzy beauty.
We live in a time where everything is overproduced and mass marketed but here we have a band who know the power of fuzz, know the power of letting a song breathe and expand out of your speakers. These are not three minute pockets of verse, chorus, verse. This is the music of a bygone era brought back into a more contemporary time. As soon as opener ‘Marauder’ opens up around you, you know straight away why this band goes by the name 1968. It has that same feel, that same groove you only got from straight back there. You feel the influences of bands like Black Sabbath, the riff moves with a smell of Jimi Hendrix and the vocals strain over the rhythms and are drenched in whiskey and cigarettes.
‘Green Sails’ is much more of a stomper, the pace is picked up from the opener, even at times hitting a garage rock stride but losing none of the groove which seems to be the bands calling card. A repetitive is complimented Jimi Ray, who really has a Chris Cornell vibe going down here.
Now ‘HMS Conan’, this, this right here is a bad ass frickin’ track! Coming in at over nine minutes long, it uses every second of that time to produce a song that deserves many, many listens. It has so much going on, it is like a retro music listeners entire collection thrown into one song. Yes there are riffs galore, the drums, like the vocals are nothing short of solid but this time it’s that fuzz on the bass that really drives you forward, especially around the three minute mark as the pace changes up and it really starts to expand it’s wings and show what this band are capable of.
Sadly though those three songs are all we get, I guess the old saying goes, leave them wanting more and that is true to a fault here. What 1968 have done here on this, which also happens to be there debut, is create not just a record but a band with legs. This is a band who are going to be around for a long time and if there is any justice in the world, will become a name that people talk about for years to come. We welcome the dirt, we really welcome the fuzz and we 100 percent welcome 1968. The past never sounded so good!
