THREE QUARTER STONE - review added 8th June 2009
Album Review: Bullet With A Name (2009)
For fans of: Alternative Rock... and musical madness
Three Quarter Stone hail from the unusually named Guelph in Ontario, Canada. It sounds like a condition you need to rub some cream on. 'Excuse me Doctor, I appear to have a bad case of Guelph'. Still, I live somewhere named after a rubber glove, so I can hardly talk.
The band are Dan Wray - vocals, Chris Drone - guitars, Steve Di Venanzo - guitars, Dave Tonelli - drums and Rob McIntyre - bass. Their sound is a right old mixture of styles and genres. One minute they sound like AC/DC on a freight train, the next like The Beatles taking LSD on a far-distant planet.
In the middle they career through plenty of reference points. The album flits around like a mental patient with a firecracker up his a*se, but never seems to lose control. Although there is little continuity from one track to the next, the result still works. Listening to the record is like eating a chocolate cookie, then a battered shrimp, a plum, a coffee bean and a beetroot all one after the other. As far as bonkers goes, this album could be the definition of the word in a dictionary.
The title track grabs your attention immediately with a high-gain riff and a bout of title chanting. It's a rough and willing track with a grungy persona and muggy, atmospheric production. The chorus is hideously repetitive, but it kind of climbs inside your soul. 'It Don't Matter' has heavy hints of Queens Of The Stone Age creeping through its veins. I could imagine hearing it on trendy rock radio station. It has a very charty vibe, although you couldn't begin to describe the song as a sellout to commerciality.
Listening to the comb-kazoo fighting the slide guitar in 'Wasted Time' makes my lips tingle. I've always hated playing those tickle-inducing vibro-instruments, so it's good to hear someone else taking the punishment. Still, it's an interesting addition to the album and has a broad bluegrass feel, totally at odds with the two previous tracks.
'Broken' is a properly weird song that's more spaced out than two pine trees ten kilometres apart. For whatever reason, it sounds great. I haven't tried living the life of a hippie, but I'd imagine 'Broken' would act as the perfect soundtrack - somebody get me some sandals and a dashiki! 'Ride It Hard' is a track which majors on the modernistic. It's a highly contemporary song which, like 'It Don't Matter', offers plenty of chart-bothering potential.
'Tough Times' has a 60's groove to the music and a 70's taste to the lyrics. It sounds like Lennon and McCartney collaborating with Pink Floyd on a track for a Vietnam war film. It's arguably the best track on the album and has bags of epic-soundtrack DNA in its blood. The final track is an acoustic cover of 'Broken'. It's even more hippie-ish than the full version.
Bullet With A Name starts as one thing and ends as something else. If you can live with the genre-crossing, this is a release with some extraordinary moments on it. As an album it is possibly a touch too mentalist. As individual songs to whack in a play list, there's something for everyone here.
Check out... That comb-kazoo.
Track List:
1. Bullet With A Name
2. It Don't Matter
3. Wasted Time
4. You Are The One
5. I Don't Need
6. Broken
7. Believe
8. Take
9. Out Of The Blue
10. Ride It Hard
11. Dressed To Kill
12. Last Call
13. Tough Times
14. Broken (Acoustic)
Artist's websites: Three Quarter Stone , MySpace
