So. What can I tell you about the "Upper Hillside Blues Revue"? Not a lot actually. Unless he/she is moonlighting from a day job with the Pinkerton Agency, promo CDs that come with no insert and a label stating only a band name and title are not generally perceived by reviewers as making the task in hand any easier. These guys don't even seem to have a website.
I can tell you that "Today's Blues" is a 6 track promo from what sounds like a 3 or 4 piece crew (depending on whether the singer wields a guitar or not) and a little sniffing around determines them as hailing from Dayton, Ohio. Trivia hounds will be disappointed to hear, however, that that's about it by way of background.
Fortunately, the music on the CD is rather less anonymous. It doesn't so much speak for itself as kind of glare at you, daring you to badmouth it in any way. Things kick off with a strong opener in "Talk of the Town." Initially reminiscent of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a scatter gun drum intro grabs you by the collar and drags you through what turns out to be a blueprint for each of the 5 remaining tracks, said blueprint being frenetic and pleasingly sparse riff-heavy rock.
Next up is "Blue Ale," it's swaggering, loping guitar sounding like undiluted Stevie Ray Vaughan. However, the band's guitarist clearly having been a very big man on campus at the University of Hendrix, it's Jimi's rather than Stevie's ghost that's to be found shouting boo! across much of the rest of the CD. There's also a strong whiff of early 70s ZZ Top here and there, harking back to the days before the weird beards started fooling around with click-tracks and all that high gloss production.
This far into the CD the cards are well and truly down on the table and it's clear which way things are heading. All booze-breath and ati-chood,"Tap the Keg," "Wake my Lover," and "The Vulture" (don't'cha love these titles?) continue shoving you further toward the door until the closing "Drop of a Dime" finally puts you right back through it and out onto your ass in the street.
The Hillsides don't try to hide their influences but neither are they a pastiche. Unreconstructed, unrepentant and (as far as I know) unsigned. No doubt a great club band, "Today's Blues" shows that they're also able to generate a good live buzz in the studio too, the one important trick that often separates the wheat from the chaff in this game. Good stuff.
Contact for more information : www.jasonwillis.8m.com (no info. posted at time of writing)
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