Sadly, Too Repetitive.
'Hard Times On the Way' is the debut album from Black Daniel; a band who are composed of two English members and one American and have come up into the light from the London and New York club scene. London brothers L.D and L.E. May have previously worked as DJs across the world and were founding members of the electro-house act Medicine 8 – the garage indie of Black Daniel's sound is thus quite a departure for the pair. Craig Higgins Jr also has a nightclub background, working as a club promoter and house label booker in New York before meeting the May brothers at a venue called Filter 14 and eventually forming Black Daniel.
Despite living on opposite sides of the Atlantic the band have managed to put together a consistent debut and slot in an extensive tour of Europe with English rockers Kasabian. 'Hard Times On the Way' takes many popular elements from the 90s and 00s indie underground scene and pops them together on one CD – from dirty electro beats to spoken word sections to insistent guitars and catchy choruses separated by verses packed full of punchy and humorous lyrics.
In 'Gimme What You Got (Pull The Trigger)' Black Daniel pull their trigger and show us what they've got to offer – a catchy but repetitive rock track covered in spiky guitars and dripping with bravado. In 'Children Caned Unable', the band could easily be mistaken for being wholly American and their background in electronic music shines through. Unfortunately it's rather dated, and after a while the persistent drums, guitars and electronic effects make listening to the track the audio equivalent of banging your head against a brick wall.
'Say Hello', along with 'Million Holes' And 'Strange Child' is a more mellow offering. 'Say Hello' features "rap" verses spoken with a sincerity not seen since the late 90s. The chorus vocals of 'Say Hello' sound very similar to that performed by The Strokes on their debut album, and in many ways 'Hard Times On the Way' is unfortunately a second-rate re-hash of that same sound. 'Strange Child' is slightly more sophisticated in terms of arrangement than many of the album's songs, as highlighted by its instrumental sections which have the potential to become soundscapes at times. Fundamentally however the track is all too easily forgettable, perhaps if Black Daniel could have restrained its vocal parts somewhat it could have been rescued from indie pop mediocrity.
Taken as a whole, 'Hard Times On the Way' is an average garage indie album from this decade – nearly two decades too late for it to sound original or ground-breakingly interesting. Its attempts to sound tape-recorded doesn't fool anyone and it is nothing new to combine spoken word vocal parts with rock music; but the tunes are catchy and the lyrics well written. 'Hard Times On the Way' is the sort of album it doesn't feel fair not to like but is impossible to feel passionate about – it's just too repetitive, both on a small, song-based level and on a larger, genre-based level.