Daystorm Music 2016
All I See
Southern rock from Midwest: heavy blues trio on the road to their pride and joy.
Uncompromising stance is a trait of youth, but it can also be a whipping post. That’s how it goes for this Milwaukee band who set a sense of urgency in the heart of their long-playing debut and, on the face of it, refuse any sentimentality. But even though a 9-minute-plus finale “Tired Of Love Songs” may suggest so, its wildly romantic groove notwithstanding, there’s a lot of emotions in here, on cuts like “Sausalito” – TYR’s own countrified “Free Bird” – as opposed to “Just A While” which is smeared with suburban ennui where it could’ve been greased with swagger.
The songs creep into one’s psyche anyway, starting from the sludgy “Worms” that kicks an album off to unhurried pace, where Ben Buttons’ bass is locked in sparely with Frankie Martinez’s drums, yet temporal bent of a few pieces builds a contradictory tension to the flow. So whereas the funky splashes in “Killing Time” perfectly convey boredom and itch to move on, “Times Is Hard” finds guitarist Alejandro Martinez venting his spleen into raw blues before it’s sped up and slowed down again to dissolve into an acoustic delirium of the cello-spiked title track. It’s hot in a spacious, if somehow claustrophobic, drive of “Here For The Ride” and the aloof ballad “Lookin'” that are rippled with a piano and smoothed with producer Gary Tanin’s Hammond, while “Night After Night” offers a heady mix of slide licks and sharp riffs.
That’s the way to go for the trio – to turn observation into action.
***3/4
