Golden Earring had always mixed hard rock and progressive rock prior to 1973\u2019s breakthrough album Moontan<\/i>, and while \u201cRadar Love\u201d remains the best-known songs from that disc (and the band\u2019s entire career, actually), the bulk of the disc was equally as strong, albeit more prog-leaning. Perhaps refusing to be pigeonholed by that single, or because prog had always been in its DNA, Golden Earring leaned more toward the prog end of things for the follow-up albums Switch <\/i>and To The Hilt<\/i>, both released in 1975.<\/p>\n
Put simply, Switch <\/i>is appealing if you think the best song off Moontan <\/i>was \u201cCandy\u2019s Going Bad\u201d or \u201cThe Vanilla Queen\u201d and not \u201cRadar Love.\u201d The sound is the same muscular hard rock as that album but with several prog flourishes throughout, such as the instrumental jam in the middle of the pulse-racing \u201cLove Is A Rodeo,\u201d the dramatic opener \u201cIntro: Plus Minus Absurdio\u201d and keyboards all over the place that weren\u2019t as prevalent before. The eight songs clock in at 36 minutes (so they don\u2019t ramble on too long) and on balance this is a solid follow-up to Moontan<\/i>, even if it\u2019s not as consistently great.<\/p>\n
\u201cCe Soir,\u201d which made it to the hits collection in 1989 (a great place to start when discovering these guys), is the standout track, a dark piece led by a bass riff and some strangled guitar in the background in the first minute, which slowly builds up in intensity as instruments get piled on (including strings) until the crescendo and fadeout. It\u2019s quite a feat.<\/p>\n
However, \u201cThe Switch\u201d is meandering boogie rock that doesn\u2019t say much until the closing guitar solo, \u201cTons Of Time\u201d is awkward and unsure of what direction to go, and \u201cDaddy\u2019s Gonna Save My Soul\u201d sort of plods along until a demonic sax solo taken from the Stooges\u2019 Fun House <\/i>closes out the piece. And while short instrumental breaks and solos can make a song better, they can\u2019t save it if the core isn\u2019t solid to begin with. \u201cTroubles And Hassles\u201d is at least energetic \u201870s rock, akin to what Grand Funk was doing at the time but noisier, and \u201cLonesome D.J.\u201d is a sort of Southern-rock proto-Meatloaf piece that manages to be both hilarious and forgettable.<\/p>\n
Golden Earring is one of those bands where a hits collection really does capture the best of the best, and other than Moontan <\/i>and Cut <\/i>their albums were hit-or-miss affairs. But there are some gems worth rediscovering beyond the better-known tracks, and Switch <\/i>is as good a place to start as any, if for no other reason than George Kooyman\u2019s guitar work and to prove that these guys were much more than two overplayed radio hits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":33010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7305],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-44792","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-golden-earring","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44792","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\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44792"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}