Review – The Badloves
“Holy Roadside”
Album on Mushroom Records
Michael Spiby & The Badloves were introduced to the music world in 1993 and since then they’ve come up with one or two widely-played tunes that have led them to concert stages everywhere. But it wasn’t until “Holy Roadside”, their second album, that they found Sounds from the Street – and we’re glad they did!
Spiby admits on the sleeve notes to the album
reviewer thereon that they don’t want to write formula songs. They could have
sat down to do that but that has nothing to do with the aims of the band. The
last thing that they wanted was to write “on the road” songs, which is
reflected in this record, landing two years after “Get On Board”
and took seven weeks to write: seven weeks well spent!
The record starts off relatively slowly with In My Garden but picks up with the first single Slave. Living Thing keeps the tempo up whilst Barefoot Bride drops it back a little for the second single Caroline. Precious comes back up a tad, using a semi-jungle beat and the almost-trademarked electric piano (is that a Rhodes?!) and Hammond sound that is now synonymous with The Badloves. I Wanna Hide comes back up with an almost-rock feel and Skin I’m In brings with it a 60s black-soul feel. Powerful Karma features an interesting mix of influences and effects whilst the title track rounds the album out, complete with a false fade which will have the radio fraternity opting for the end at 4:00 rather than 6:49!
“Holy Roadside” looks for The Badloves to be the difficult second album that will have no trouble sitting next to the first as well as sitting quite comfortably apart from it. We gave the record 3½ from 5 and look forward to our next meeting