Harking back to the days when rock was ‘blues-tinged’ and ‘redraw’, the UK’s own Sweet Crisis capture that ‘black magic’ with, well, their song titled ‘Black Magic’. This song is brilliant with soaring vocals and that gritty guitar that reminds me of those awesome days when Deep Purple and The Rolling Stones ruled the charts and guitar greats like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck held on to that guitar god crown firmly.
About Sweet Crisis
Sweet Crisis is a contemporary Blues-rock band in which the roots and the music run deep. Singer Leo Robarts and guitarist Piers Mortimer first met when they were kids in the early 2000s, and as Leo says, “This band is all about soulful, rock n’ roll”.
Sweet Crisis was formed in Cambridge in 2015, and after a number of lineups, an album was recorded in 2018 but then discarded. “It was very frustrating,” Leo recalls. “We spent a year making that album, and then realized we didn’t like any of it. So we ditched it.” As Piers explains: “We knew we could do better. We needed to be true to our roots and play the kind of music we grew up on”.
The starting point was re-visiting albums they had ‘borrowed’ from their dad’s record collections: Free, Humble Pie, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Zep, and The Stones. Piers offers “We want to capture the vibe and spirit of the classic British rock bands we grew up on and still love so much. Killer riffs, soulful emotive vocals, and great drum grooves. We’ve always enjoyed playing epic guitar riffs and Leo’s voice really inspires our songwriting”.
@sweetcrisisband [rotatingtweets screen_name=’sweetcrisisband’]Leo says “We’ve been guilty of overthinking things in the past, so we wanted to loosen up, capture a vibe and record ‘old school’. We needed to go out, play gigs and grab some studio time. Piers and I started jamin’, formed a new band, and then headed out on tour to Switzerland. We spent the days writing new material and getting high, and then every night played for hours in small clubs, trying out the songs on a different crowd. We arrived back in the UK at 10 am Monday morning, in the studio by lunchtime and by midnight we’d recorded 5 new tracks. We were fortunate to get Don Airey (Deep Purple, Whitesnake) to come in and lay down some Purpleesque Hammond Organ, and having Sarah Brown (Pink Floyd, Roxy Music) record some spine-tingling backing vocals was the cherry on the top!”
Leo states “The starting point was definitely a cheeky nod to Hendrix, and very much inspired by The Black Keys and Gary Clark Jnr – bands that respectively tip the hat to the Blues but add a modern spin. Piers finishes “. We’ve been at this since we were kids and it’s like we’ve come full circle. It feels good to be making a sound that comes naturally and not to be searching. Our time is now!”
LINKS:
https://facebook.com/sweetcrisisband
https://twitter.com/sweetcrisisband
https://instagram.com/sweet_crisis
