Bad Touch – Bittersweet Satisfaction
Release Date: 8th December 2023
Label: Marshall Records
Order/Stream
Genre: Blues Rock, Soul.
FFO: The Answer, Blackwater Conspiracy, The Quireboys, The Black Crowes.
Review By: Paul Franklin
“We are a feel-good, good-time rock’n’roll band.” So says Bad Touch guitarist Daniel “Seeks” Seekings, and really, why does it need to be more complicated than that? It doesn’t, and Bittersweet Satisfaction, the band’s fifth album, is a 10 track, 35-minute testament to that.
Slip Away is the albums opening hand, and right away they have pulled a Full House out of the deck. A no messing, up-tempo little number that shows that the band are brimming with confidence, but crucially not arrogance. With some bands that promise the listener a ‘good time’, you can’t help but feel they are trying just a little too hard to deliver. It’s like those big nights out that you plan with your mates, with everyone for weeks beforehand hyped up and eager for the ‘best night ever’, only for you to get there and realise that you are all trying so hard to enjoy yourselves, that no one actually is, and that the ‘best nights’ actually those with no expectations at all.
Bad Touch have managed to recreate that same metaphor in sonic form. All of the songs here are just bloody good blues-soul-rock tunes that exude enough positive vibes, that you don’t feel guilty about tuning out the fact that the world is a bit shit right now.
The title track in particular does a great job of hurling all that is great about the band into one glorious collision of riffs, grooves and a killer chorus. Whereas other tracks, such as first single Nothing Wrong With That, bring in some southern harmony and make perfect musical companions to the classic rock.
There is certainly nothing bittersweet about the satisfaction you get from listening to this album, one where every track could be a single and every track oozes with class and sass.
As has already been said. It really ain’t complicated!
(4 / 5)
