‘The Greasy Slicks’ by The Greasy Slicks (Album)

The Greasy Slicks impressed us greatly when they played at Songwriting Live. With their debut album, they’ve done it again

UK blues-rock trio The Greasy Slicks released their long-awaited debut album this week. At least, it was long-awaited by us: we’d been blown away by these guys when they played a Songwriting Live event early last year, and were keen to see whether they could capture that raw, live energy in the studio.

Thankfully, it turns out they can. Their eponymous debut opens with the 1m 18s of atmospheric drone that constitute Werk, but then with second track Hawks goes straight into the hi-octane blues-rock that is the lads’ stock-in-trade, as can be seen from similarly-styled cuts like Eyes Wide Black and Until Dawn. That’s not to say there’s no variety on offer, though. Barefoot hints at a slightly more mainstream indie-rock kinda sound, as to a lesser extent does Willows, while Beggars is vaguely reminiscent of early QOTSA.

There are two tracks in particular, thought, that suggest bigger things await The Greasy Slicks. The first is Let Me Down: sparse, slow and wistful, we called this a “Clapton-esque blues lament” when we heard it live, and while the studio version’s a little more polished it gives us no reason to rue the heavy-hitting comparison. And then best of all there’s Street Queen, which starts out sounding like ANOther contemporary blues-rocker à la Alabama Shakes or The Black Keys, but then unexpectedly drops down, after a minute and half, into some seriously lanquid, fuzzed-out guitar soundscapery the mighty Golden Earring could be proud of.

With the likes of John Fairhurst, The Greasy Slicks and Little Brother Eli around, the future of blues-rock in the UK is looking very rosy indeed.

Verdict: Next-gen blues-rock laden with swagger and stomp

Russell Deeks

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