The Flaming Sideburns – Silver Flames
Release Date: 23rd April 2021
Label: Svart Records
Pre-Order
Genre: Garage Rock, Blues Rock.
FFO: The Stooges, Hellacopters, MC5.
Review By: Paul Franklin
First of all, let’s not beat around the bush. The Flaming Sideburns is a great name. Makes you wonder if there’s a great alcohol/flame-based anecdote to explain its origins?
Silver Flames is the Finnish band’s first album to feature all five original members since 2001’s Hallelujah Rock’n’Rollah . After that release guitarist Arimatti Jutia moved to the US, forcing the band to soldier on with a rotating line up. They released a couple more albums and played hundreds of shows before things ground to a halt in 2016. Two years later, the founder members were back in touch with each other and arranged some reunion shows, this rekindled the flame (sorry!) and led them back to the studio with a bunch of new songs.
Fundamentally The Flaming Sideburns play reverb-heavy, garage blues rock inspired by the likes of The Sonics or The Stooges, but they do add a few extra flavours to the basic recipe. Hence, you have a straight-ahead approach taken by rockers like the title-track and the lithe Searching Like A Hyena, the pop-tinged choruses of Perfect Storm and Cast Out My Demons, and the old school 60’s rock’n’roll feel to Freak Out. As the title suggests, Reverberation (Doubt) turns up the reverb on both guitar and vocals to create the kind of deep, psychedelic vibes that would have been perfect for teenagers in baggy Joe Bloggs jeans and fisherman’s hats at a 90’s indie night.
Whilst on the subject of track titles speaking for themselves, A Song For Robert is the band’s heartfelt tribute to Robert Dahlqvist, the Hellacopters guitarist who would often join them onstage. The song starts slow and gently before bursting with joy at the happy memories of their old friend and the promise that it’s “Gonna be loud tonight!” Amen to that. The final two tracks, Nibiru and Trance-Noché, add in some Latin American swagger, not least due to Argentine-born frontman Eduardo Martinez singing them in his native Spanish.
So, it may have taken twenty years, but the boys are back in town, and they’re back with an album that whilst it won’t set the world on fire, it should certainly be enough to more than singe a few whiskers.
(3.5 / 5)
