Anna Hawkins
Mouserocket (from left): Jonathan Kirkscey, Robert Barnett, Alicja Trout, Robby Grant and Hemant Gupta.
Cicada Sounds
Mouserocket
Shoulder Tap Records
The local quintet Mouserocket, a sort of supergroup made up of members of such esteemed outfits as Big Ass Truck, the River City Tanlines, Vending Machine, and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, is supposed to be an afterthought. Tanlines (and Lost Sounds and Black Sunday) leader Alicja Trout started the group a dozen years ago as an outlet for some children’s songs. And to this day the now-more-adult-oriented group, which performs sporadically, still finds itself competing with its members other side projects.
Even with a established name and fan base (its last record, 2008’s Pretty Loud, earned an impressive 7 rating from online hipster Bible Pitchfork.com, Mouserocket only set aside a scant five days to record its recently released third album, Cicada Sounds.
In light of the finished product, available in local stores and through Bandcamp, it seems clear that the haste was more for aesthetic or financial reasons than a gauge of how much commitment and thought members of Mouserocket put into the project. In fact, the new record may well be the pinnacle of achievement for all involved, a catchy, smartly crafted alternative rock album that stacks up with the best of recent memory.
Featuring the excellent rhythm section of Robert Barnett on drums and Hemant Gupta on bass as well as the invaluable stamp of Jonathan Kirkscey on, most significantly, cello, at its core, the appeal of Mouserocket still remains the tension between the songwriting styles of Trout and co-front person Robby Grant (Big Ass Truck, Vending Machine). The two have clearly had an impact on each other.
On songs like “I Can’t Keep My Hands Off You” and “How To Say No,” Trout, whose hooks still retain a spark of the band’s youthful inspiration, shades her usual hard-driving rock style with all sorts of intriguing harmonic shifts and unexpected progressions. In contrast to Trout’s five songs, Grant contributes only two (the eighth, set closer “Flying Saucer Home” is from Brooklyn musician Timothy Feleppa), but they may be the collection’s best, with the ever quirky tunesmith not over thinking things on tracks like the Foo Fighters-worthy rocker “Take More.”
Mission Control
Black Rock Revival
Self-released
Memphis singer/guitarist Sebastian Banks started Black Rock Revival two years ago with the express intention, as the name pretty much states, of reclaiming the music invented by Chuck Berry and Little Richard for African Americans.
It’s a daunting task, one which has been tried by the likes of Living Colour and 24-7 Spyz to name just two. And Banks, former lead singer of a Metallica cover band who had just begun to learn guitar, faced longer odds than most in a city that remains pretty segregated musically. With scant resources and one failed effort behind him, Banks made his second CD, last year’s Keep It Together, in his apartment with his two then-new bandmates, Hype playing electronic drums and bassist Percy “Blue” Mitchell, wearing headphones so as not to disturb the neighbors. It was a dismal atmosphere in which to record a rock album, and the claustrophobic sound of the disc reflected it.
Singer-guitarist Sebastian Banks leads Black Rock Revival.
On their follow-up, Mission Control, currently available at Spin Street and at the band’s shows, Black Rock Revival has found much better digs and the result is a much more organic and successful effort. The new record benefits from the steadying hand of local studio ace Kevin Houston working out of Midtown’s Music + Arts Studio, formerly Sounds Unreel. (A documentary about the album’s making is in the works.)
Having the players in the same room actually listening to each other play real instruments gives standout tracks like “Genetic Trait” and “Lola Falana” the requisite energy they require. There are a lot of musical touchstones here, notably Jimi Hendrix and his late ’60s contemporaries like Blues Cheer and Cream as well as funkier later day influences like Prince and Living Colour, and the band assimilates them well into something altogether unique on the local scene. Banks songwriting — at times too monotonous, too frenetic at others — doesn’t always keep up, but in all this a great leap forward for a band on a mission.
Black Rock Revival performs at 10 p.m. Thursday at the Hi-Tone Café, 1913 Poplar Ave., with the Chinese Connection Dub Embassy and the Incredible Hooks; and on Thursday, July 21, at 7 p.m. at the Peabody Hotel Rooftop Party with FreeSol.
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