Stormcellar Band Home Page

Nuevo Retro reviewed on Trad & Now

Gee - found another review yesterday for Nuevo Retro. Here ya go.

Stormcellar - Nuevo Retro

CD review by Chris Spencer

I was surprised, but pleasantly so, when I began listening to this CD.
This is the 2nd album from Sydney group Stormcellar.
While the band cite influences from rock, country, folk, blues, jazz and pop, (was there a genre they omitted to mention?) this album is more country blues influenced.
The first track, “Can't Tax Love” is a great introduction to the band.
Bluesy, slide guitar, a bit of boogie, a tasty guitar solo and a vocalist who has a reedy voice compared to say the vocalist from Canned Heat, rather than a deep, black blues voice.
Another surprise was the sentiments of track 3, “Don't Get Around Much” which has an environmental theme, with harmonica and slide guitar assisting.
Perhaps the centre piece of the album is “Roscoe' Boogie” which is a driving boogie, told from the point of view of a friend commenting on his mate going to war.
While it's not an obvious anti-war song, there are sentiments that make the listener question the “excitement” of being in the army, parachuting out of planes and being where the action is!
Another strong song follows - “7 Days” - that has a powerful riff and is fat and bluesy.
It's a love song of sorts as the singer grapples with his love of gambling and that of his girl!
“Last Drinks at Glenrowan” is the band's foray into folk while “Swamp Monster” is appropriately swampy.
The jaunty, bluesy last song, “Drink You Off My Mind” is a male drinking song, which shows the band's sense of humour – vis “ I just need a little time at the bar to drink you off my mind!'

On the strength of this album, I'll be more than tempted to try and have a listen to their first album.
Much more blues than folk, though and there’s nothing wrong with that

Hollow Tree played on Triple J and no one told us?

Go figure..whilst trying to fill out an online form for Yet Another Website For Musicians, I was looking for the link to our iTunes page and came across a playlist from February on Triple J. Turns out Sarah Howells 'Roots and All' program played Hollow Tree! OMG! We've been played on Triple J! If I was still 16 I'd be freaking out about it!

Thanks to jplay.com.au for listing the playlists, we found out we're ranked 6900 out of 13000! Woohoo!

Still pretty cool though. Triple J has always been the Hipper end of the Radio Dial, although to be fair, my Indy Tastes pretty much stopped at Interpol (showing my age)...sigh...the station that introduced me to Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes (night of the wolverine), Beck, Bjork...I gotta stop, its making me feel ancient...if you're scratching your head and going either 'who the %^@ are those bands' or 'dude, thats so 2003' then I have made my point.

Then again, I'm, not sure what my point was. If you can figure it out, email me here and let me know.

Nonetheless, Cheers Sarah! We made it all the way to the J's. Our work here is done.

Now that we are officially Hip, I'm going to grow a moustache and a mullet, maybe get a job at Chick Fillet! (to quote Ben Folds Five).

Oops, there it goes again, just blew my cred. Heh.

Stormcellar at the Riverside Inn in Airds, Saturday 20th August 8pm

Last gig before Mr Wizard visits Japan, whereupon I'm guessing we'll see some new song inspirations (the Earthquake Boogie?).

Saturday night, in Airds (sounds scottish), 8pm start, free! Yay!

Mr Wizard loses and regains a hat in Penrith and the Bald Rock Goes Off - weekend Gig reports

Yay, after a week or so of Sniffles and our local flu variant, I am back to blogging! Hurrah! And so, here's some moments from this weekends gigs.

We started on Friday with a late show at the Penrith Hotel, great to see EJC come down and boogie, and a shout out to Sambo and Garfield. We had some problems with the sound desk to start with, occasioning a lot of replugging (and some feedback) until we got that right, but then we settled in for our first gig at the Penrith Hotel! They do a great lineup of live music there including our mates Jim Finn, Slinky Pete and Paul Surani in the Flaming Beauties, and Spy Vs Spy!

But of course, there are always some exceptions to your fashion choices:

With Penrith playing a home game, things were quiet early on, but one intrepid Lass decided she liked Mr Wixards cowboy hat so much she simply had to borrow it for a moment.

After a solid few sets, we finished up the night and headed out into the wee small hour cold of Penrith to a well earned rest before the next gig at the Bald Rock, which we had reason to believe, would be a big gig.

Duly, Saturday night rolled in and found us back at Rozelle's Premier Roots Haunt, the Bald Rock, where Alan and Kumaya had come down to do a little filming of the band (you'll have to wait for Alan's shots until I get them from his tricky camera, thanks to Miriam for the loan).

We were fortunate to be joined by Stuart 'Albertross' Back for a few songs as a special guest, Stuart is a very tasty guitarist and it was a pleasure to jam with him. We're hoping he will come back and join us again soon.

We had a huge turn out on Saturday - cheer to Pam, John, Wendy, Sue, Robert, Joshua and a very special shout out to The Cousins, Helena, Bindy, Damien and friends who came to spend the night on the boogie. I could describe the vibe, but then again, it's simple easier to post some vids. With luck, later this week, i will get to post the vids from Alan who was off stage (lol) as I have to keep interrupting filming to play harmonica and sing :-)

Here's Ruth getting down during Up the Line

here's a bit of Mike Rix on bass.

Now for some of Mr Wizard during 7 days

And of course, some of Rosie's solo during Swamp Monster

Saturday night was a terrific gig and we all had a thoroughly grand time. Thank you to eveyone who spent the evening with us. Mr Rix is off on tour so we'll be joined by Mick Mallouf on Bass at our next gig in Airds, but Mr Rix will be back soon, we'll miss you Redline.

Over the next week I hope to post more vids from the Southern Fried Big Band and some additional stuff filmed by Alan at the Bald Rock, so stay tuned for more updates. We'll be in Airds next Saturday and then we have a week or so off whilst Mr Wizard visits Japan, then its up to Tamworth and Newcastle.

We hope to see you, Dear Reader, at a gig soon.

Rgds

MJEB

Stormcellar at the Bald Rock Hotel 8pm Sat 13th Aug, 8pm

Time to get on down at the Bald Rock tonight, should be a good evening with a host of friends (and cousins!) coming on down tonight. yay!

8pm, free!, Mansfield St Rozelle, down by White Bay

first clip from the Southern Fried Big Band night

Howdy folks, as promised, here's the first of the clips. Now bear with me, Greg did some filming for us but the video files are pretty humongous (ie: Big) so they're taking me a while to split and upload.

This is a clip of us doing Can't Tax love, I am offscreen behind the speakers (LOL, suits me fine) but you can see some awesome Keys from Jeremy Craib.

Over the next few days I'll post some more. Cheers to Greg for holding the camera, the sound quality isnt too bad either :-)

Stormcellar Band Home Page

More Articles …