Michael Eavis is a fan, surely that’s enough?
BlackBud are quickly becoming increasingly popular, following two performances at this year’s Glastonbury festival. They also have a whole summer of gigs lined up, including Guilfest and the Summer Sundae Festival. This demo CD is available from their website (www.blackbud.co.uk) and was sold after the two sets at Glastonbury, and probably after the forthcoming gigs.
‘158’ starts with a pretty clean guitar, before it apparently builds up to a false climax of the verse bass pattern. Joe Taylor’s voice is beautiful in its melancholy, and, though comparisons to other bands this early in a review is probably a bad idea, is reminiscent of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Of course, Black Bud are not Radiohead. This mellow blues is not even close to Radiohead’s experimental jitterings, or even to their earlier Britpop style. 158 combines a simple verse pattern with an infectious interaction between the vocals and guitar in the chorus. This slowly builds up to the climax throughout the song, with slow guitar solos and developing vocal harmonies, adding to the yearning, pleading lyrical style.
‘Sitting By The River’ is a slow funk song reminiscent of Hendrix songs ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ or ‘Hey Joe’. That is, they are of a similar style, rather than reminiscent in melody or chord progression. The perfect use of vocal harmony is again used to build up the pleading tension throughout the song, with the climax in the rhythmic changes of the middle section, before a beautiful section built on a guitar melody behind the vocals. The song ends unresolved.
‘Wandering Song’ begins with an ever-so-slightly dissonant acoustic sounding guitar part which is picked up by a booming tom rhythm and crescendo cymbals, creating an epic feel. Still the vocals writhe and yearn over the chords that crash downwards into a lyrical guitar solo. The piece continues in this epic vein with crescendos of drum and cymbal under the vocals that flourish around the melody perfectly.