Smooth And The Bully Boys "Old School Rebel"

(Smooth And The Bully Boys 2014)

Old Time Gone
Old School Rebel
Hu Hu Hu
At The Beginning
If It's You
Did You See My Cat
Devil Dices
I'll Be Rocking
This Train
Rockabilly Baby
Addict
Voodoo Kitchen

Rockabilly is a real bone of contention with me. It was my first love musically and led me on my merry way to psychobilly. I preferred psychobilly because it was wilder and had no rule book. I still love my rockabilly but a lot of it tries too hard to be "authentic". Bands strive to recreate that 50s sound which more often than not just ends up sounding like some shite demo tape with no energy. It even ends up sounding more like safe western swing than the raw wildness that was 1950s rockabilly...the original punk rock. Rockabilly in my opinion is a not a museum piece; it's a contemporary musical genre. It's the unimaginative bands that let it down with their churning out of the standard fare and lyrics that are so samey it's hard to distinguish one rockabilly song from the next. There's just fuck all variation. Jaysus you'd think after 60 years of the genre being around someone would inject some much needed adrenalin in to it. Enter our heroes: Belgium's finest Smooth And The Bully Boys. They take that vintage rule book and wipe their arses with it. They play that ballsy blend of rockabilly that slaps along with enough power and pace to appeal to both the rockabilly and psychobilly subcultures in equal measure. Unlike some of their psychobilly counterparts though, lead vox-man Michel can actually sing..and I mean sing! He has a great voice. The kind of voice I love with its whisky soaked/tobacco burnt tones. There's a lot of diversity on this album; be it slap bass heavy rockabilly, blues, straight up rock'n'roll or dark ballads, and his voice is perfectly suited to all. Purists mightn't like this album but I don't like purists so fuck em. Just when I was starting to lose faith in rockabilly, Smooth And The Bully Boys have churned out an album that has me born again!

The O'Prez