Pearls and Brass, "The Indian Tower"

Thesecond album from these Pennsylvanian chaps is full of chunkyblues-inspired riffs. Not in a nasty, necrophilia-tinged way like LedZeppelin but more in a Sabbath-style with a nod to past greats. While Iappreciate the straightforward rocking and absence of wank solos,unfortunately there’s not much to make Pearls and Brass anything morethan just another generic stoner rock band.

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The Indian Towerisn’t a bad album, I like it as it is just rocking out for the sake ofrocking out but there are times on it when I forget who I'm listeningto.  They sound like dozens of other bands found in alocal run down venue or on MTV. In particular this album seems like acarbon copy of the first Queens of the Stone Age album. "The Tower" isa good song but Pearls and Brass have no distinctive features in thissong nor in the rest of the album. The vocals sound exactly like theaforementioned Queens of the Stone Age. In fact, everything down to thetone settings on the guitar smacks of Josh Homme. It annoys me thatsuch a garden variety band can get an album like this released when I'msure there are more bands out there that could bring somethinginteresting to the table.

Infairness to the band, they are extremely tight. They've obviously honedtheir playing down to a fine art. The rhythm section is powerful;Martin’s drums sound like Mike Tyson is punching the beats into them.The bass and guitar sometimes mush together into a lump of chugging butit sounds good. As I mentioned, there a lot of blues in theirmusic, with Huth’s guitar in particular erupting in many nice littlelicks. “Pray for Sound” being the highlight of the album and a goodexample of Huth’s playing, however, he seems to be stuck in a guitar rutas there’s not much variety on The Indian Tower.  Most of the songs sound very similar with these guitar lines. There are a couple of tracks that steer clear of the same old riffs such as “I Learn the Hard Way,” which has some delicious fingerpicked acoustic guitar. The lyrics aren't the best I've ever heard but they fit with the music.

Pearls and Brass won’t be praised as being saviours of rock for this album. The Indian Tower is a good, if run-of-the-mill, album.  There are no surprises on it but serves its purpose in stimulating rhythmic head nodding. That's about all it will stimulate.

samples:

• The Tower
• I Learn the Hard Way
• Pray for Sound

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