Album title: Delta T
Artist: Steve and the Nepotisms
Nationality: Dunno
Genre: Not a scooby
Chronology: Search me
What do I know about this artist? Not a damn thing
What’s my experience with this genre? I am unable to answer that question sir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tioM...o0kaY&index=20
Review: It just amazes me how people now put their “official websites” together. There is ZERO information on these guys ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE! Nothing but a picture of an album (not this one) and links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al. I man, how ****ing lazy can you be? No bio, no information, no discography, no tags. Nothing. On their own website. So once again I’m going in here totally blind as the proverbial flying mouse. Not the slightest clue what this band or artist is going to be, what to expect, armed with not even the most basic information about them such as what genre they are or how many albums they have or hell, even where they come from!
Right well “Red” starts off with a ticking clock, mirroring the picture on the cover, then a ringing guitar reminiscent of Pink Floyd at the opening of
The Division Bell slowly fading in and getting a little more audible. Siren going now, like an air-raid warning then eventually a big heavy guitar crashes through, bringing powerful organ with it. I see this opener is nine minutes long, so could this be prog maybe? The vocal has a kind of country/folk feel to it with a bit of blues mixed in, so you know, I don’t know. Let me look at some other sites, see if I can find them anywhere. No, not a screed of information can I dig up. Their Soundcloud page is as devoid of data as their own website. Definitely a blues feel now, could be psychedelic rock maybe? Damned if I know. Do I like it? I’m really not sure; the keyboard work is pretty superb, though I couldn’t quite say the same about the vocal.
The title track seems to run mostly on a fast piano line with growling guitar and some great organ runs, and is I think an instrumental, has again a vague sense of prog in some of it, a really nice church organ passage with what might be synthesised flute perhaps; goes through a lot of changes, in fairness, for a piece that’s less than five minutes long. “Icarian Lullaby”, on the other hand, is very short, just over a minute and a half, and I would assume with a length like that it would be another - no, there’s a vocal, and indeed it is very much the lullaby, seems to be female vocals here and it’s mostly driven by a nursery rhyme-like piano. “Blood for the Money” comes in on powerful throaty organ, with a dark, kind of chanted vocal which then turns into a pretty standard one and bounces along on a nice guitar line.
I’m really not sure what to make of this so far. No idea what genre it fits into; seems to straddle a few different ones - blues, prog, psych, folk, country, hard rock. I find “The Dirt” pretty weird, with a sort of off-key vocal and elements of ELO in the backing vocals, then about half way there’s a lovely piano passage, which sounds completely out of place, the more so as the vocal starts a high kind of croon (or is that the guitar?) and slides back into a Floydy sense of melody. It comes across as pretty fractured, this song. Guitar breaks out then at least in the introduction of “For You”, the melody sounding pretty similar to the previous song, almost as if this a continuation of it. Yeah I think the overall impression I’m getting here is of too much crammed into every track: just when you think you have a handle on it they change it into something different and it’s quite disorienting.
“Losing Sleep” is a nice little ballad, which for once seems to go more for the simple approach. I feel this band/artist works better when they do this, rather than, as they then do, hammering me over the head with a thousand different things in the slightly Waits-infused “The Big Easy”, jazz and blues meeting and weaving all over the place, but it’s not too bad. I just wish I knew what these guys were about - it’s a little like listening to an album from Diablo Swing Orchestra or The Dear Hunter: you never quite know what’s coming next. I suppose that could be seen as a good thing, but for me it’s just more frustrating than anything else. There’s still another fourteen tracks to go (twenty in all) and I feel it may be something of a slog.
Sounds like we could be on to a winner though with the gospel-like “Doubt”, with a slow, measured pace and some sort of doo-wop backing vocals against a triumphant rolling organ (shut up) but “Masters of Shadow” is not much good at all, getting back to this idea of forcing too much into one song, and the vocal is quite exaggerated, which doesn’t help. A lot better is “Angels in the Dust”, with a nice bubbly keyboard backing and some ticking percussion (drum machine?) and a proper vocal. Okay, now there’s some speech for apparently no reason. Think he may be talking to someone on the phone, maybe saying goodnight. If so, puke even more than Steve Earle’s “Little Rock and Roller,” and I hate that song. Some stupid warp thing at the end too, just in case I didn’t hate it enough. Ridiculous.
And so it goes. Kind of impossible to know what to say about this album, it’s just so much all over the place. “Ghosts” hits you in the face and runs off laughing, “Regret” has a lot of hollow majesty about it, a nice instrumental, and “Just in Time” is not without its charm, but it’s hard to pin down decent tracks as nothing seems to stay the same for very long. I never consider it a good sign when I’m constantly checking the track listing to see how much longer this goes for. I mean, it’s not so bad that I wish it was over, but I’m finding it a bit of a struggle, won’t lie. There are some gems here, like the lovely sweet piano ballad “Too Much Living”, but you do have to sift through an awful lot of, not garbage, but second-rate stuff to get to them, and I don’t know if I think it’s worth the effort.
Things get rocking with “Clear to Me/The Escape”, which has a real hard edge to it, led by snarling guitar and with a pretty fine piano arpeggio at the end, while “Water” brings back the early folk/country feel, squeezing in a little gospel there too, with a nice, if somewhat incongruous instrumental ending, and then “Breaking Free” goes back to the heads-down rock with somehow a sense of the more upbeat songs of Mostly Autumn. Yeah. Shut up. And the final track is the longest, over ten minutes of “Better Man”. Sounds like it might be an epic end to a not-exactly-epic album, finishing strongly with a powerful anthem. Superb organ here and it’s almost but not quite gospel again in its approach, certainly a lot of emotion in the piece and a fine closer. If I’m honest though it probably runs for two to three more minutes than it needs to, adding to the overblown nature of this album. Too many tracks, too many ideas all crammed together, and many of the songs too long. Never heard of the phrase “less is more”, guys?
Favourite track(s): Losing Sleep, The Big Easy, Doubt, Regret, Too Much Living, Better Man
Least favourite track(s): The Dirt, Masters of Shadow
Would I listen to more? I really don’t think so, no. This was a struggle, and while there were good tracks there, it’s not an experience I’d wish to repeat.
Rating: