Night Beats - Sonic Bloom

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 25 / 1 / 2014

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So, as a band, how many genres can you actually span? Well, it so happens that the Night Beats span genres for fun. They are based in Seattle, and describe themselves as a “garage/punk/blues/rock/ early R&B/ Texas psychedelic rock/ UK blues/ folk/soul” band. They have been making music as a band since 2009, and they name themselves after the Sam Cooke album ‘Night Beat’. ‘Sonic Bloom’, their second LP, follows on from a self-titled debut album and an EP ‘H-Bomb’ Danny Lee Blackwell (guitar/vocals) is originally from Dallas, Texas. He founded Night Beats when James Traeger (drums/vocals) moved from Austin to join him in Seattle. The then two-piece picked up Tarek Wegner (bass/vocals), and they toured extensively in North America during 2010, gaining enough exposure to get themselves signed within weeks of self-releasing the ‘H-Bomb’ EP by Chicago's Trouble in Mind Records, who have also released records by Ty Segall, the Fresh and Only’s and Hex Dispensers. They have toured with groups including the Black Angels, Roky Erickson, the Zombies, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Strange Boys, Black Lips, and the Growlers. Since their conception in 2009, the acidic sound quality and squealing vocals of the music have stayed intact, but with each release they stamp a new vibe of anger, suggesting that one of these days Night Beats might explode at any minute. The raw fuzz-fuelled rock of ‘Sonic Bloom’ should really bring them the interest and honour they rightly deserve. Night Beats thrust the out-of-the-ordinary nature of their psychedelic music to the fore, and slap it around their listeners’ faces. The influence of the Zombies is very evident, but their music also is tinged with an element of more contemporary artists like the Black Lips. Their songs are well crafted and catchy. Upon first listen they have tunes that put the listener back to a simpler time, but I can also hear other influences too at work like that of the Last Shadow Puppets on ‘Playing Dead’. Their hooks, however, hook you as early as the opening track ‘Love Ain’t Strange (Everything Else Is)’ which, along with ‘Playing Dead’, is among the highlights on this LP. If you want to get down a bit more groovy still, check out super head-shaker songs like ‘The 7 Poison Wonders’ and ‘The Hidden Circle’ with their infectious beats or ‘Rat King’ with its feedback and guitar switches. Keyboards and horns are used to beef up an already energetic recording. Blackwell’s guitar is uplifting. Tarek Wegner’s bass playing is exemplary and with James Traeger’s drumming this should make it on to a few folks' Top Ten list of the year. ‘Catch a Ride’ makes a good use of weird samples, and the seven minute and forty two seconds of ‘The New World’ closes ‘Sonic Bloom’. If I had one slight, and, let me be truthful, it is only aslight, criticism of this, it would be the fact that the lyrics are a little drenched out in places. But what the hell! I couldn't hear them anyway for my head shaking too much.

Track Listing:-

1 Love Ain't Strange (Everything Else I
2 Sonic Bloom
3 Playing Dead
4 Outta Mind
5 Real Change
6 Satisfy Your Mind
7 Catch a Ride to Sonic Bloom
8 The Seven Poison Wonders
9 As You Want
10 The Hidden Circle
11 Rat King
12 At the Gates
13 The New World

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/thenightbeats.u.s
http://www.thenightbeats.us/
http://www.last.fm/music/Night+Beats

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