Well, it’s been a long while but there’s no denying it; it’s high time we had a look at how Stovepony’s rising sons The Lucky Strikes have been getting along. Having spent a long weekend in February at erstwhile Hawkwind, Groundhogs and Amon Duul II bassist Dave Anderson’s Foel Studio, laying down tracks for their third album, now titled Gabriel, Forgive My 22 Sins, things are now stepping up a gear. Like its predecessor, The Chronicles Of Solomon Quick, Gabriel… is a concept, based on the life of boxer Frankie Valentinez and the battle for his soul. As with the difference between their eponymous debut and Solomon…, the trajectory continues to route away from noisy garage-blues in the direction of wider-screen folk and country influences, no doubt helped by Big Jim Wilson’s flying fiddle as lead instrument. However, be assured that that killer blues punch is, largely thanks to Will Bray’s Bonhamesque drumming, still firmly at the album’s core. As befits the album’s theme, there’s a strong undercurrent of gospel, as could be found in the music of Dyaln and The Band, later in Green On Red (circa the masterful The Killer Inside Me) and The Gun Club, and later still in Arcade Fire.
The songs are all team efforts, lyrically split 50/50 between singer and guitarist Matt Boulter and guitarist and keyboard player Dave Giles. But so meticulously executed are they, so seamless the album’s flow, it’s impossible to tell who’s responsible for which, or to choose a favourite. But the opening ‘The Boxer, The Bribe And A Father’ displays a new complexity and confidence in the band’s writing, ‘Codeine’ stirs tense emotions, while the rambunctious ‘Easily, Easily Until It’s Done’ and the hymnal ‘Slowly The Night Fades’ (an Xmas single in waiting, if ever there was one) show that they’re already writing with the greater audience in mind. Indeed, prior to the album’s release in January 2011, the band will birth their debut (download-only) single ‘We Are Waves’ on 15 November. The last track on the album and, like ‘Paranoid’, something of an afterthought, ‘…Waves’ has, to use an aching cliché, hit written all over it. Of course, it probably won’t be a hit. And there’ll be no dodgy ‘Lucky Strikes For Xmas No 1’ Facebook groups, that’s for sure. But those who take the trouble to hear the song – perhaps encouraged by Boulter’s recent shows providing lap-steel for Simone Felice, or by one of the many shows the band has been playing in the run-up to the release – should feel that they’ve heard something rather special. The album will serve to confirm that.
