Living In Style
(Monster)
My first contact with the band was through the video clip of “Retribuition”, a hard-hitting Kiss with the guitar paradinhas and a hypnotic swinger. In the clip, the band played in a room full of people, watered with deer and sweat. I sympathized immediately. Then a Bahian correspondent swore to me: “It’s the best band in Bahia!” If it is the best I do not know (this business is better … it is better), but that I suffered a penetration, well given, listening to this work, I did. Without a doubt it is our other headboard gold (from this edition) because it contains all the elements that make rock real, to be good. The best of the CD is not limited to the fact that the compositions of Fábio Cascadura, and partners, are faithful to the 60 and 70 school of rock (The Who, Beatles, Stones, soul music etc.) but rather to the fact that they are based on the soul of the composition and not in form. It’s classic, but it’s smart and very musical. It doesn’t sound like a bunch of riffs, but rather like a melodic confluence of exhilarating melodies and sagacious harmonies. In many moments, it resembles a cross between Faces and Humble Pie (and is there anything better?), But without the vices of the old seventies. It’s classic without upsetting the listener. And the details? The black choruses, the Bahian accent singing hard rock, the hammond blasting, the wave effects in the voice, the sudden change of pace for a psychedelic passage … Wow! How much luxury! Beatles from the beginning of their career in “Queda Livre”; Sound Garden sucked with Nirvana in “Jóia da Princesa”; the dragado tough from “Sparkie Girl”; gospel “Wendy” and Stoneniana “A Mãe da Garota” where Fábio (Really? We have to investigate!) has sex with his girlfriend’s mother. It’s a perfect record that goes round from start to finish. He’s going to die of old in my collection.
