Review – Heaven
Scent “Am I Crazy?”
Independent CD
single
My introduction to Heaven
Scent was by way of their “2001 Demo”
which led to a very pleasant surprise when the opening chords of Am I Crazy?
broke through my cans for the first time. A five-piece outfit established in
Melbourne several years ago, Heaven Scent is a pop
rock bent, described as “honest rock.”
Sounding for all the world like something straight off the
current Triple
M / One / Nova playlist,
the lead / title track has Justin Murphy combining vocal styles
and sounds of Rob (Matchbox 20)
Thomas, Ed (Live) Kowalczyk
and Adam (Counting Crows) Duritz while the
rest of the band travelled along with the late-80s / early-90s pop-rock style
of either Bon Jovi
or Devils In Heaven. Zollie Juhasz did well with
producer/engineer Aaron Humphries to create that dirty-rock sound
on the guitars which is the 
driving force of the track. No wonder Triple M
picked them up as best “Unsigned Find” in 2000 and “Unsigned Artist of the
Week” twice between September 2000 and May 2001.
The remix by Spider & Fletch, produced at Les Funk Studios by Fallon Williams and Paul Strahan, retains the dirty-rock sound along with Felice Lomuto’s Fender Rhodes-styled keyboards over quite a successful intertwining of the original rock and 90s disco electronica with a Patrick Hernandez bass-line and Scott Marvelly’s original bass tabs.
The meat in the musical sandwich is not-quite a
power-ballad. No Need To Cry brings the early-90s Devils In Heaven
musical schmalz to the fore, overridden by the same lyrical sentiment that
always featured during the ‘slow bit’ at the end of the 
school discos we all endured. Oh well…
they did say in the accompanying press that their appeal was to a wide-ranging
audience.
Heaven Scent certainly have their muse bundled up in a successful package that seems to be working well for them. Am I Crazy? appears to be the successful “debut” that will be difficult to emulate (Screaming Jets Better, Klinger Goodbye Cruel World, Ruck Rover Thornbury, etc) but from the current demos they’re coming very close to escaping this group of artists!