When The Black Crowes first burst on to the scene almost a
\ndecade ago, I seriously thought we were witnessing the birth of a
\nnew genre of music. Combining the sensibility of the blues with the
\nenergy of Southern rock – and a bit of free-form madness a la the
\nAllman Brothers, this was an exciting amalgam of music that I was
\nlooking forward to hearing a lot of. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite
\nmaterialize that way.<\/p>\n
Now, in a slightly similar vein, come the Buzz Prophets and
\ntheir debut disc
\nKentucky<\/i>. Combining equal parts of the Crowes and R.E.O.
\nSpeedwagon, they dare to make this music come alive again. And,
\nwith a few exceptions, they do a pretty admirable job.<\/p>\n
The band – vocalist Scott Clark, guitarist Drew Wohl, bassist
\nAnthony Mancebo and drummer Charlie Bonet – often seem to invoke
\nthe spirit of Collective Soul in their music, such as in the title
\ntrack. Invoking a funky backbeat, they layer the song’s heart with
\ncrunchy guitar riffs and catchy vocal lines. It doesn’t work quite
\nas well as they would have hoped, but they don’t do a terrible job
\non the attempts.<\/p>\n
What does hurt the Buzz Prophets coming out of the gate on
\nKentucky<\/i> is that it takes them time to build up momentum,
\nand to find their own niche. The opening track, “Better Believe
\nIt,” is hardly a fair representation of the band, and has Clark’s
\nvocals hidden to far in the mix. On this track, it sometimes felt
\nlike I was listening to a ’90s metal band like Firehouse.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for the Buzz Prophets, tracks like “Wasting Time”
\nand “Break Down” lock the listener in and make them want to
\ndiscover more about the band. These are the tracks that suggest a
\nbright future for the band… but there is a part of me that feels
\nthe true energy of these songs can’t be captured in a studio
\nsetting.<\/p>\n
Despite the comparisons I’ve made of the Buzz Prophets to other
\nbands, it is interesting to note that by the time tracks like
\n“Break Down” hit your earphones, they’ve developed a sound of their
\nown that doesn’t rely on the established bands of the genre (even
\nif they borrow an idea or two from them). This is where I hear the
\ntrue potential of
\nKentucky<\/i>; this is a beginning effort from a band that is
\njust now discovering what kind of power they possess.<\/p>\n
The only real problem with
\nKentucky<\/i> is that it takes so long to really get engrossed in
\nthe album. I think it took me six tries to get past the first three
\nsongs on the disc, just because I kept losing my concentration on
\nthe music. On one side, that’s not good; you want the listener to
\nbe enraptured by each note. Then again, I
\ndid<\/i> keep going back to the music…<\/p>\n
\nKentucky<\/i> is a decent first effort from the Buzz Prophets,
\nbut I’m excited not about what I hear on this disc, but what I hear
\nthis band potentially doing in the very near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7392],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-38960","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-buzz-prophets","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38960"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}