Silvertide - American Excess

Count to 5, then we all get to chant "Erun is a sucker! Erun is a sucker!" loud and proud. Why? Because gritty rock with wailing, serpentine guitars gets me everytime. Skinny dudes singing about going around in circles and marijuana as a metaphor for relationship- It's my Achille's heel. (See obsession with Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Nirvana b-sides, Sublime, et. al). So you should know that Silvertide's 3-song EP got me in the gut and I'm biased, right? It's only fair, right? Wrong. You should be swayed by my opinion. Very very good, these three songs. I now know where Chris Robinson's talent went after the Black Crowes went on an "indefinite hiatus"- It went to Silvertide. And they took it out back to the BBQ pit and rolled it around on some wood hewn from an old Jimmy Page guitar and thus became... American Excess. Make it so, it is born. And it is good. All three songs are good, and they get knocked out of the perfect 5.0 range because, hey- It's only three songs and they sound pretty similar after a bit... But great vocals, great bass, great guitars, great package, great swagger, great sound, great presentation. (Using the same word like this is called "emphasis" btw.) There's something wild and rootsy and purely great about this band, and the fact that they're on J Records (remember Clive Davis?) will aide them in a quest, should they be up for it, to make some mega-somethings for/of themselves (make 'em a bio page, Clive). But genuine southern-fried hippie rock without any particular message, just some honesty, some vitriol, and some awesome guitar solos. Go get the album and brag to everyone that you were the first to know. [www.silvertidemusic.com]