Classic Rock UK - April 2019

Tesla

Shock UMC

Tasty, Leppard-flavoured rock gives Tesla

their best record since the early 90s.

L

ast summer, when Def Leppard

guitarist Phil Collen was putting the

finishing touches to the album he

was producing for Tesla, he spoke warmly

of the Californian band’s simple virtues.

“I’ve always loved that style of classic

American hard rock,” he said. The

surprise, in the aptly named Shock, is the

extent to which Collen has polished up

Tesla’s act – and in doing so, made this

great band sound rather like his own.

The close ties between Tesla and Def

Leppard go a long way back. In 1987, with

both bands managed by Q-Prime, Tesla

opened for Leppard on the Hysteria tour.

The exposure was instrumental in turning

Tesla’s debut album, Mechanical Resonance,

one of the best rock records of the 80s,

into a million-seller.

In recent years the two bands have

continued to tour together, and it was out

on the road that work on this album

began, with Collen taking a hands-on role

as co-songwriter. As a result, the songs

have Leppard’s DNA mixed in with

Tesla’s. And as a producer, Collen has

applied to this album much of what he

learned from Leppard’s mentor Mutt

Lange, such as the pop hooks and slick

vocal harmonies.

The delightfully named Dave Rude,

one of Tesla’s two guitarists, has

described Shock as “a very produced

record... that still sounds like Tesla,

but definitely a little bit different”. This

much is certainly true. These guys still

rock out in that classically all-American

way, as first defined on Mechanical

Resonance. The voice of Jeff Keith, still

a great rock’n’roll singer, remains

as distinctive as ever. But with Collen

guiding them, echoes of Def Leppard run

right through Shock like ‘Clacton-on-Sea’

in a stick of rock.

Much of this comes with the way the

backing vocals are stacked high in the

choruses, whether in a roughhouse rock

song such as You Won’t Take Me Alive, or in

the three lovingly crafted ballads. And

while two heavy numbers, Mission and

Tied To The Tracks, are vintage, no-frills

Tesla, the best track here is the one on

which Collen’s influence is strongest: Ta s t e

Like, a Leppard-style mix of AC/DC and

the Stones’ Brown Sugar, complete with

confectionary-themed innuendo.

It is a little weird, all of this – the shock

of the new, a band sounding not quite as

they have done for more than 30 years.

But it works – at times brilliantly. What

Phil Collen has pulled out of Tesla is their

best record since the early 90s.

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Paul Elliott

Townes

Va n Z a ndt

Sky Blue TVZ/FAT POSSUM

Previously unreleased songs,

covers and reworked classics

mark late troubled genius’s

75th birthday.

Recorded in

1973 at a pal’s

home studio in

Atlanta, this

collection

captures Van Zandt at a star-

crossed juncture. The previous

year’s The Late Great Townes Van

Zandt had sealed his legend with

the cognoscenti, but its title’s

wry reference to his commercial

standing proved self-fulfilling.

Trapped in a business bind,

Van Zandt wouldn’t release

another studio album until 1978.

That was a career-stalling

shame, as the evidence from

official and bootleg live sets and

this intimate beauty is that he

was at the height of his

formidable talent.

Previously unheard, the title

track and All I Need have the

unflinching poetry, indelible

guitar picking and exalted soul

bearing that remained talismanic

throughout his wayward life and

his addictions.

True recording studio niceties

aren’t always met, but that’s of

little consequence when

a songwriting giant is absorbed

in a steely confrontation with

songwriting demons, whether

recasting The Late Great’s Pancho

And Lefty or an 1880 East

Tennessee murder ballad.

Blue Sky is 33 minutes of

fearless, peerless and

unvarnished brilliance.

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Gavin Martin

Crypt Trip

Haze County HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS

Southern cow-psych romp

hits pay dirt.

With this, their

third album

(the follow-up

to 2018’s

Rootstock),

Texan power trio Crypt Trip build

up a ferocious head of steam

exploring “the complexities of

time and space” through earthy

southern-rock pillaging and

convoluted instrumental flights.

The album’s secret is in

audacious musical melding that

can see Ryan Lee’s psychedelic

cowboy vocals hopping aboard

riffs swinging between liquidly

dextrous and hard as a bison’s

boner, enlivening tracks such as

To Be Whole and Death After Life.

The unison acrobatics of Free

Rain even tumble into prog-

infested waters, like Focus in

denim, sparkling extra

dimensions provided by pedal

steel maestro Geoff Queen;

rooted in tradition but futuristic

in lustre as he garnishes the

Flying Burritos-invoking Ounce

Blues. Drummer Cameron

Martin even gets away with

a solo on Gotta Get Away.

Analogue technology adds

a tough, leather boom to a band

that currently seems unstoppable.

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Kris Needs

Tim Bowness

Flowers At The Scene

INSIDEOUT

No-man’s man at his most

broken-hearted.

Not unlike

rifling through

a box of old

letters and

photographs,

Bowness’s latest album is

a surprising distillation of longing,

memory and loss. Heavy with

lament, it sounds like the work of

a man who’s hit bottom and is

now slowly piecing together the

steps that lead him down there.

His approach could best be

described as unflinching. The

very beautiful Not Married

Anymore sets the tone for

a record that is ruminative and

lovely, delicate and down-at-

heel. It’s rich in tone, and the

production and mix by Bowness

and his sometime bandmate

Steven Wilson is as crisp and

clear as a cleanly struck bell.

Which does little to mitigate the

pain in songs like The Train That

Pulled Away or the faltering War

On Me, which recalls Red Shoes-

era Kate Bush, another record for

the heartbroken.

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Philip Wilding

Dream Theater

Distance Over Time INSIDEOUT

Fourteenth studio album is

more rock than prog.

At times

guitarist John

Petrucci’s

shredding on

this record is so

insanely, implausibly fast that it

recalls the sound cassette tapes

made when they jammed and

became spaghetti. These Berklee

College Of Music drop-outs will

forever be labelled prog-metal,

but at heart this album is metal

with just the occasional hint of

prog. Like Muse after excessive

espressos, they plant a bomb

under bombast.

The band moved into an

upstate New York barn (which,

ALBUMS

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