Candle In The Dark – Them Dirty Roses (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Candle In The Dark, the new one from Them Dirty Roses, reminds us that, despite what people say, rock and roll is still more than fit for purpose. As journalists (not me, other lesser beings) prematurely announce the death of guitar music, admittedly something they have been doing every two years since 1982, bands like Them Dirty Roses defend the genre merely through the deftness of their songs.

Part southern rock groove, part old-school rock and roll traditions, part classic rock moves, Candle In The Dark shows that guitar music is not dead. On a good day, it can eat the competition for breakfast. And this is a good day—a very good day indeed.

Riff heavy and shot through with brooding bass drives, scintillating guitar lines, unfussy but brilliantly functional beats and vocals that perfectly straddle a sound that is suitably world weary and also erring on the side of the anthemic, this is the classic rock sound brought up to date. Sixty per cent rock tradition, thirty per cent alternative abrasiveness and twenty per cent incendiary infectiousness, not to mention at least eighteen per cent unaffected by the constraints of mathematics; its the sound of rock and roll being polished up, pushed on and given new propulsion and purpose in the modern age. Groovy!