A lesson in Country Rock that lays it on a little too thick
Stevie Klasson is one of Sweden’s best-known guitarists, and runs a vintage guitar shop in Stockholm with The Cardigans’ Peter Svensson and The Hives’ Vigilante Carlstroem. A good place to start then, but is his album any good? It’s not actually much at all like The Cardigans or The Hives, but runs more along the vein of Country Rock, with plenty of rhythm & blues guitar thrown in for good measure.
The album begins with ‘Goin Mental’ and the opening riff makes you think for a moment that you’ve put Ocean Colour Scene’s ‘The Circle’ on by accident, which then flows into a steady but generic rumble of drums and bass that sounds like any other inoffensive song you might hear on local radio. There follows ‘Hand Me Downs’, with a funky lead guitar full of attitude and Klasson’s vocals taking on a Mick Jagger quality at times, with a lazy drawl and stretching of vowels. The first couple of songs stand up as good Country Rock tracks, but it soon becomes evident with the rest of the album that this is all we’re going to get. There’s no attempt to dabble with elements of different genres or styles. ‘Do What You Want’ ‘Downbound Train’ and ‘Angel In Black’ are all typical country songs, with driving drumbeats, strutting guitar rhythms and Klasson’s swaggering vocal lead that could almost have come straight out of Texas. Especially ‘White Line Fever’, with its sing-along chorus and high-energy tempo, conjures up images of ho-downs and cowboy hats. And while fans of Klasson, or even simply of this type of music, may be happy with this offering, people looking for new things or those hoping for a diverse album will be disappointed.
Some songs do manage to achieve a slightly different effect. ‘Talk Too Much’ has an almost Led Zeppelin-esque sound, with squealing and stammering guitars, bluesy keyboards and even suspiciously similar riffs. Songs like ‘Sweetheart Angel Pure’ and ‘Bedspring Symphony’ have nice vocal harmonies, with the mixing of Klasson’s voice and lighter female vocals over upbeat vintage rock-and-roll guitar melodies and good old-fashioned piano battering. However, the operative word was ‘slightly’, and the songs still sound similar to the rest thanks to their Country vibe, which runs right the way through the whole of the album.
‘Lucky’ is one song that changes the tone. It’s a really bluesy song, with a melancholy keyboard melody played behind layered guitar riffs, which creates a really rich, soulful sound. The lyrical content is a little questionable, featuring the lines “I’m lucky/ Yeah I’m so lucky/ ‘Cos I’m alive and well/ I’m not in jail/ And I can rock it on down like a hurricane”. However, the album at least has some substance and deviates from any boy-meets-girl cliche. ‘Don’t Mess With Evil’ also features a soulful quality, with a particularly good bluesy guitar style, tinkling piano, crashing drums and gruff vocals, and it’s a nice wind-down to the album. Overall, this is a strong Country Rock album that seems to advertise what Stevie Klasson is all about, which is never a bad thing. However, to me, all the songs seem to merge into one. I would have liked a little more variation, even a spin on the Country theme, to keep the album interesting and to see what else Klasson can do.