Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy |
Close your eyes and imagine: it’s a muggy, oppressively hot Tuesday night in the middle of the summer. A friend calls to invite you to a club you’ve never heard of to see some band from England. You aren’t one to say no so you don’t. The club is on a side street in a pseudo-industrial area and looks like it shouldn’t legally be allowed to hold more than 40 people. You get inside and join 150 people cramped and sweating in a grimy, basement club. Somehow you find your shins pressed up against a barely raised stage packed with equipment. You’re curious, excited and admittedly a little terrified. You’re trying not to imagine what would happen if there was a fire… After what feels like hours a palpable hush falls over the crowd and two people step on stage. Both are clad in impossibly tight dark jeans and black leather boots and jackets-within seconds the room takes on a serpentine rhythm and you breathe and sway and jump until well past exhaustion and well past an acceptable hour for a Tuesday night.
That feeling, that reptilian, sexy trance is exactly what the excellent Blood Pressures feels like. What it sounds like isn’t that far off either. Heavy beats, VV’s (Allison Mosshart) dreamy, breathy, phone sex voice coupled with Hotel’s (Jamie Hince) rippling pulsing guitar drive through 42 minutes of exciting, danceable, glorious rock and roll. The real stand outs on this record are ‘Heart Is A Beating Drum’ and ‘Nail In My Coffin.’
The great surprise of Blood Pressures is an unexpected tenderness not found on previous releases. VV gives us little hints into the personal on ‘The Last Goodbye’ and ‘Damned If She Do’ and it feels like a special little gift.
The only real downside to Blood Pressures is that even at 11 songs and 42 minutes it doesn’t feel long enough; the album doesn’t feel complete. We’re left with a little sense of unresolved desire. But would one more song be enough?
