Rock music has a tough time in the modern age. Gone are the days when it was enough to kick out a heavy blues, three chord jam, the modern audience wants more musical bang for its buck. So whilst some bands head off in search of new alt-rock horizons and others lighten the load and aim for rock-light commerciality, Lou Patty show us that there is still a way for modern bands to combine old school grit with modern age accessibility, traditional styles with forward thinking music.
Hostile is a wonderfully blend of classic rock guitars and electronica and if history has shown us that electro-rock experiments tend to be more electro than rock, more aimed at the dance set than the rock fraternity, then Lou Patty is just the band to put the record straight. The riffs are big and brutal, the bass and back beats drive perfectly but the breakdowns prove that the band understand dynamics and space, that they know that if they take the foot off the gas for a while the rush when things kick back in is even more delicious. This is rock not only for the modern age but rock that can lead the way into interesting new possibilities and potential for the genre.
And as a calling card for their latest e.p. it perfectly displays all of their musical interests and alongside this opening salvo you will find a broad range of musical styles being subsumed, adapted, warped and bent to their will. Kings and Servants indulges their straighter rock interests, Minute of Peace wraps glitchy guitars around staccato beats blending industrial intensity with dark dystopian vibes and Molly Ray comes on like a funky Prince number give a razor wire make over.
This is rock for a new generation, rock wearing a coat of many generic colours, rock realising that the tribalism and demarkations that have long kept the genre on a very straight and predictable path need to be abandoned, more than anything this is rock embracing the future, beginning a new chapter and having fun along the way. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?
