Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Falkmore, Kenza Records 2022.
It was very hard to find any information about this band on Google and Wikipedia, or for that matter anything about their record label.
So, I contacted the music supplier. While waiting for a reply I started listening.
Better Days consists of 10 tracks and my first impression when selecting it for review was reinforced by the opening track of the album.
This band is good.
They play a folk/rock not dissimilar in style to the great Australian band Weddings, Parties, Anything and their lead singer even sounds like Michael Thomas.
The first track, Uneasy Sky, hooked me in with its opening line “better days are left behind us, better days lie up ahead” offering hope in challenging times.
This excellent opening is followed by a couple of love songs, Red and Trust Fall, in this case it’s love lost.
Trust Fall takes a universally used trust building exercise as a comparison to tensions in a relationship.
And so the album moves into one of the recurrent themes in rock & roll, sex, in the track Trans Am.
Lick The Bone follows, a track that challenges those who question the status quo, “so don’t tell me you’re happy because you can’t have no meat but you can lick the bone.”
It was at this point that they started to lose me.
From the sixth track, Monkey, onwards they veer solidly into fundamentalist Christian territory.
Monkey is unadorned fundamentalist doctrine and it’s followed by I Could Use A Prayer, and Season in Jericho.
The latter a call to arms to once again tear down the walls of that famed city.
The final track Bimini Road is one of the best on the disc and although the gospel message is still there it’s subtle and not at all strident.
As someone who made an informed decision to leave the church and religion a long time ago, I found the overt preaching disconcerting.
I suppose the lack of profile and information about the band on the net should have alerted me.
Certainly, taking a closer look at the song titles may have given me a clue, but I was fascinated enough by the music to continue.
The most annoying track is Monkeys which preaches that God created everything and told us about it six thousand years ago.
And he didn’t make us out of monkeys, and if you don’t believe that then he’s making a monkey out of you.
The complete rejection of science and everything that we’ve learnt about the development of life is gobsmacking.
Apparently, there are no dinosaur bones either.
Anyway, each to their own.
The music distribution company got back to me suggesting I contact the promoter of the CD. I haven’t bothered.
