Published on May 21, 1999
When The Black Crowes first burst on to the scene almost a
decade ago, I seriously thought we were witnessing the birth of a
new genre of music. Combining the sensibility of the blues with the
energy of Southern rock – and a bit of free-form madness a la the
Allman Brothers, this was an exciting amalgam of music that I was
looking forward to hearing a lot of. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite
materialize that way.
Now, in a slightly similar vein, come the Buzz Prophets and
their debut disc
Kentucky. Combining equal parts of the Crowes and R.E.O.
Speedwagon, they dare to make this music come alive again. And,
with a few exceptions, they do a pretty admirable job.
The band – vocalist Scott Clark, guitarist Drew Wohl, bassist
Anthony Mancebo and drummer Charlie Bonet – often seem to invoke
the spirit of Collective Soul in their music, such as in the title
track. Invoking a funky backbeat, they layer the song’s heart with
crunchy guitar riffs and catchy vocal lines. It doesn’t work quite
as well as they would have hoped, but they don’t do a terrible job
on the attempts.
What does hurt the Buzz Prophets coming out of the gate on
Kentucky is that it takes them time to build up momentum,
and to find their own niche. The opening track, “Better Believe
It,” is hardly a fair representation of the band, and has Clark’s
vocals hidden to far in the mix. On this track, it sometimes felt
like I was listening to a ’90s metal band like Firehouse.
Fortunately for the Buzz Prophets, tracks like “Wasting Time”
and “Break Down” lock the listener in and make them want to
discover more about the band. These are the tracks that suggest a
bright future for the band… but there is a part of me that feels
the true energy of these songs can’t be captured in a studio
setting.
Despite the comparisons I’ve made of the Buzz Prophets to other
bands, it is interesting to note that by the time tracks like
“Break Down” hit your earphones, they’ve developed a sound of their
own that doesn’t rely on the established bands of the genre (even
if they borrow an idea or two from them). This is where I hear the
true potential of
Kentucky; this is a beginning effort from a band that is
just now discovering what kind of power they possess.
The only real problem with
Kentucky is that it takes so long to really get engrossed in
the album. I think it took me six tries to get past the first three
songs on the disc, just because I kept losing my concentration on
the music. On one side, that’s not good; you want the listener to
be enraptured by each note. Then again, I
did keep going back to the music…
Kentucky is a decent first effort from the Buzz Prophets,
but I’m excited not about what I hear on this disc, but what I hear
this band potentially doing in the very near future.