The Mooney Suzuki seem to have
plunged through a wormhole based back in the lands
of 70s soul-rock
with this single (just have a look at the
cover art and you’ll see what I mean).
Full of pumped-up faux-James Brown vocals,
bluesy guitar licks, tambourines and a full-on
soul queen backing choir, “Alive and
Amplified” is one of those songs that
seems to be all chorus.
In the live arena I’m sure that’s no bad thing,
but on record it gets repetitive very quickly. There’s
plenty of energy but it’s all at the same level; it
doesn’t build up to anything or go anywhere, so this
isn’t so much a song as a bit of background noise for
a good party.
Kerrang! laughably reckons we should “Pretend The Strokes
and Jet never existed, ‘Alive and Amplified’ simply
demands to be heard” – I fail to see why The
Mooney Suzuki would have listened to either of those for
their influences (I’d bet their influences go much
earlier than that), and there’s certainly no evidence
of it here. So that’s a big plus. And the song certainly
does jump out of the speakers at you. It just doesn’t
hold your attention for very long. You can kind of tell they’d
be good to watch live though, so maybe that’s more
their realm than that of the cd single.
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