After spending 2015
steadily building up a loyal fanbase through regular gigging including prestigious
support slots on shows by the likes of the legendry Pretty Things and freaky festivals
such as the very trippy Kosfest, the three piece Roz Bruce Infusion are back
with another album of paisley flecked psycho dramas. Led by the prodigiously
talented singer, songwriter and bitchin’ guitarist Roz Bruce, her band are not
psychedelic in any perceived conventional sense……….the Roz Bruce Infusion are
not about swirling Eastern motifs or interplanetary flights of fancy, they are more urban spacemen/woman (Roz is
more likely to write about going to Spar and buying a Galaxy bar than going to
Mars and flying through the galaxy). Roz
Bruce has all the lyrical intensity of a confessional songwriter but where you
would expect this outpouring of emotional rawness to be backed by yer customary
acoustic guitar or piano and arranged in the perennial standard style of the
folky female songstress, you get a squalling, bluesy, psych tinged, late
60s/early 70s influenced power trio tearing the walls down……… With solid, unfussy bass and drums from Gaf Evans and
Dom Dillon as tight as you like, providing a rock solid platform for Roz Bruce
to unleash her inner Psych/Blues guitar id, People it’s an oestrogen fuelled
Groundhogs. On first listening it
doesn’t half catch you by surprise, as any preconceptions you may have about
this band get completely blown to bits.
Compared to the previous
record, You Deserve To Be Here, there has been an audible shift through the
gears and this new record has more depth both sonically and emotionally. Goodbye
To Love also shows that Roz Bruce is essence steeped in the folk tradition of storytelling,
more or less eschewing the normal verse/chorus/verse structure for something
more lyrically complex sung in her own East Midlands accent………..if the Roz
Bruce Infusion were not so bloody noisy they would no doubt be a Folk Rock
band. There are some really great psychedelically charged songs on this record…………the
opener ‘Come With Me’ is a swirling, fuzzed up rocker evoking the period from
the end of the 60s when psychedelic pop was mutating into something heavier,
giving us songs like ‘Magic Potion’ by The Open Mind, while the rolling bar
room piano led ‘I Am Not A Crook’ is charming clumsy funk that really should
not be anywhere as good as it is. The album’s title track is an absolute belter…….a
slow burner of a tune that builds and twists its way to scorching climax. Goodbye
To Love is a fantastic, enthralling, emotionally red raw Psych/Blues record
that if you liked the previous Roz Bruce Infusion album, you will really like
this. If you are new to Roz, her band and her music you really need to check
this out.
Goodbye To Love will be
released next week (15/01/16) on CD and will be available to buy from the RozBruce Infusion on line shop. There will be a download available from iTunes/Amazon
and you can stream it on Spotify.
EXCELLENT review!
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