Nazareth
Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone
Union Square Music
2014
Forty six years and exactly half the albums (studio any way) into their career, the erstwhile Scottish rockers have to make one really tough move and that’s to say their goodbyes (at least recording wise) thank God, unlike the case of Darrel Sweet, Dan McCafferty is still alive and kicking… so to speak, relatively… because he almost, ended up kicking the bucket a couple of times, when performing in recent times… seemingly the “rock ‘n roll” lifestyle and advancing age – he’s 67, this year (bless him) finally caught up with him prompting him to decide to bow out of touring and allowing the band to get, another Scottish gentleman by the name of Linton Osborne as his replacement, to whom he gave his blessing. However prior to passing the mic to Osborne and all that, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone” the sort of final “McCafferty” album had to be completed and Danny Lad, had decided to go out of the Nazz’s recording career with a bit of a bang, which is only deserving.
The band offers eleven tracks, of nasty, rock music that has lot of attitude.
Opener “Boom Bang Bang” might have as dumb – dumb lyrics as you might expect (lol), with a title like that, but it grooves like a mofo with a bad itch… what an excellent track!
“One Set of Bones” rips up the covers with a mean riff and bemoans, having only so much time and resolve and strength to endurance… it sort of looks down at mortality and all that… will all his health issues, McC, still manages to sound like he means biz... well I suppose all those cigarettes must have given him extra gravel – but probably robbed him of a few “performance” years too... with one set of bones and lungs too… that’s the way things are…
“Back 2b4” has this nice laid back, more Beatleasque sort of vibe and it’s a nice throwback to earlier styles and it’s also pretty catchy as well!
“Winter Sunlight” is a beautiful and tender number that D, sings with a broken down voice, but works “beautifully”! An absolute highlight!
“Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone” is weird... the title track, is based around the laziest choppiest riff, you’ve ever heard, with McCafferty channeling a pretty good, “old times performance” for it and it hazily just goes on and on, super lazy and dazzly and it’s by no means a bad number… I suppose it has lots of character, especially in the solos and the band just “sells it”! The lyrics, make as little sense as possible, but do you really care? It’s probably about being too plastered, hahaha, to have a telephone with you hahaha… you know what, with the obsession people have with their mobiles… haha, if there was such a thing as an RnR telephone, I’d get on, so long as it would only rock the hell out!! Haha and no-one would call me on it, especially banks to advertise loans, ex-s, advertisers from telephony companies etc. etc. :P
“Punch a Hole in the Sky” isn’t offering Sabbath worship, but an ultrafast (all things considered) storytelling of how airplanes sometime punch holes through clouds… that sort of remain… it’s a simple 2x4 rocker, that’s very basic, but works really well, to get, the “blood pumping” and keep things from getting tooooooo loose after the lazy and hazy “Telephone”…
Having done their “rocking duty” for the week, Nazz, switch down to a much lower gear for the cool and sweet “Long Long Time”, which is a bit like “T-Rex” with a ton of sugar…
“The Right Time” is probably the slowest song on the album, like “real” slow and it talks about timing, which, well is everything in life, but ain’t always right…
“Not Today” is another slow, but devilishly heavy and mean number, that just gathers strength and erupts, all about not giving up…
“Speakeasy” shows you, probably where Axl rose, got his inspiration for singing… rock ‘n roll with balls, at its finest… with maybe a couple of rough edges – but who gives a funk now!?
Last but not least “God of the Mountain”, cascades down, like an avalanche… and was actually used I suppose, by the “Austrian” skiers as a bit of an “anthem”? Again a very simple, but effective rocker with its chorus being repeated over and over…
The limited deluxe edition adds 2 extra studio tracks and 5 live ones.
“Just a Ride” is a really heavy and groovy number that is metallic in nature and wisely tracked apart from the rest… while “Wanna Feel Good?” is a much funkier, jammy party number that just manages to pass along its infectious grooves. As aforementioned there are also 5 live cuts, “Big Boy”, “Kentucky Fried Blues”, “Sunshine”, “Expect No Mercy” and “God Save the South”, which are all good fun and add value to this value for money package.
Nazareth, were never really a bad band, it’s just that with that long a career, at some point, they weren’t able to maintain their impetus and momentum and really shrunk to very much a nostalgia act, even if their albums were in fact pretty good, which is a shame. “Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone” is no different, it’s quite a good effort even near half a century into a career that took this little band from Dunfermline, Scotland, all around the world and up and down the charts... well, it certainly is a nice “final stand” for Dan McCafferty before “he hangs it” and any fan of the band and fan of rock music, couldn’t really go wrong with this album…
The band offers eleven tracks, of nasty, rock music that has lot of attitude.
Opener “Boom Bang Bang” might have as dumb – dumb lyrics as you might expect (lol), with a title like that, but it grooves like a mofo with a bad itch… what an excellent track!
“One Set of Bones” rips up the covers with a mean riff and bemoans, having only so much time and resolve and strength to endurance… it sort of looks down at mortality and all that… will all his health issues, McC, still manages to sound like he means biz... well I suppose all those cigarettes must have given him extra gravel – but probably robbed him of a few “performance” years too... with one set of bones and lungs too… that’s the way things are…
“Back 2b4” has this nice laid back, more Beatleasque sort of vibe and it’s a nice throwback to earlier styles and it’s also pretty catchy as well!
“Winter Sunlight” is a beautiful and tender number that D, sings with a broken down voice, but works “beautifully”! An absolute highlight!
“Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone” is weird... the title track, is based around the laziest choppiest riff, you’ve ever heard, with McCafferty channeling a pretty good, “old times performance” for it and it hazily just goes on and on, super lazy and dazzly and it’s by no means a bad number… I suppose it has lots of character, especially in the solos and the band just “sells it”! The lyrics, make as little sense as possible, but do you really care? It’s probably about being too plastered, hahaha, to have a telephone with you hahaha… you know what, with the obsession people have with their mobiles… haha, if there was such a thing as an RnR telephone, I’d get on, so long as it would only rock the hell out!! Haha and no-one would call me on it, especially banks to advertise loans, ex-s, advertisers from telephony companies etc. etc. :P
“Punch a Hole in the Sky” isn’t offering Sabbath worship, but an ultrafast (all things considered) storytelling of how airplanes sometime punch holes through clouds… that sort of remain… it’s a simple 2x4 rocker, that’s very basic, but works really well, to get, the “blood pumping” and keep things from getting tooooooo loose after the lazy and hazy “Telephone”…
Having done their “rocking duty” for the week, Nazz, switch down to a much lower gear for the cool and sweet “Long Long Time”, which is a bit like “T-Rex” with a ton of sugar…
“The Right Time” is probably the slowest song on the album, like “real” slow and it talks about timing, which, well is everything in life, but ain’t always right…
“Not Today” is another slow, but devilishly heavy and mean number, that just gathers strength and erupts, all about not giving up…
“Speakeasy” shows you, probably where Axl rose, got his inspiration for singing… rock ‘n roll with balls, at its finest… with maybe a couple of rough edges – but who gives a funk now!?
Last but not least “God of the Mountain”, cascades down, like an avalanche… and was actually used I suppose, by the “Austrian” skiers as a bit of an “anthem”? Again a very simple, but effective rocker with its chorus being repeated over and over…
The limited deluxe edition adds 2 extra studio tracks and 5 live ones.
“Just a Ride” is a really heavy and groovy number that is metallic in nature and wisely tracked apart from the rest… while “Wanna Feel Good?” is a much funkier, jammy party number that just manages to pass along its infectious grooves. As aforementioned there are also 5 live cuts, “Big Boy”, “Kentucky Fried Blues”, “Sunshine”, “Expect No Mercy” and “God Save the South”, which are all good fun and add value to this value for money package.
Nazareth, were never really a bad band, it’s just that with that long a career, at some point, they weren’t able to maintain their impetus and momentum and really shrunk to very much a nostalgia act, even if their albums were in fact pretty good, which is a shame. “Rock ‘N’ Roll Telephone” is no different, it’s quite a good effort even near half a century into a career that took this little band from Dunfermline, Scotland, all around the world and up and down the charts... well, it certainly is a nice “final stand” for Dan McCafferty before “he hangs it” and any fan of the band and fan of rock music, couldn’t really go wrong with this album…