With the new take on guitar music, Django Django with art rock, The Vaccines bringing the grit with a sort of garage rock sound and Alt-J with their Mercury Prize winning math folk, guitar music has stretched into many different genres and sub-genres searching for a new sound. Carnabells have bucked the trend and have looked back much further to find their distinct 50’s sound.
Hailing from a small mining village in the heart of Yorkshire, Carnabells formed as “brothers Luke and Mitch Thompson finally decided to form an indie rock n’ roll band.” Latter along came drummer Tom Webster, bassist Louis Appleyard and pianist Jack Mattison too help the band settle on a sound with “its heart and soul in traditional rock n’ roll”, that their fans affectionately call coal mine rock.
The Ramshackle Rattle EP is their latest release, scheduled for 7th October. The first track is the bouncing “All I Wanna Do”, it kicks the EP off to an energetic start, guitar stabs and big drum rolls fill the verse alongside the tracks classic but infectious lick. The guitars become more fluid for the chorus as upbeat juddering piano joins for a fuller sound as Luke’s lyrics of “but if life could be so easy, but life is not that easy…” fill your ears with slick rock ‘n’ roll until we find the heart of the song through, “… but unfortunately, you will never love me. But there’s no harm in dreaming, and I sure enjoy dreaming”.
‘Magazine Dream.’ starts out sickly sweet with the lines “L.O.V.E.M.E., that’s what you said to me. L.O.V.E.M.E, we were only seventeen”, before the beat kicks in and brings the track back to the feel good rock ‘n’ roll vibe.
The best track of The Ramshackle Rattle EP in my honest opinion is the final song “Life In Pictures”. It starts with an atmospheric build-up of guitar, rolling drums and moody bass before the shout of “1,2,… 1,2,3 Hey!”, as the riff drops into a track that’s as much as a call to arms to have fun as a party popper going off in your face. I can’t help but jig and feel happy to this track.
Here’s the EP’s bonus track, ‘Paper Shaker’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHBm8MOiERc1
Final Verdict
The Ramshackle Rattle EP shows that Carnabells have potential but no killer tunes that will send them to the next level.
3/5
