Trident Waters – 'Hollywood To Vegas' EP Review

Tracklist:

1. Be So Bad

2. Eva Lane

3. Futility

4. Desert Soul

5. Gallows

6. Eva Lane (CLEAN VOX)

Well, who doesn’t love a down to the core three-piece Rock outfit? I certainly do, I’m in one. The thing I love is, its bare bones, guitar, bass, drums, stripped back wood and wire with no hiding places and not one of the three guys in Trident Waters lets the side down.

This band of Londoners have the look, the sound and the songs to go with it. All that is missing is a bit more of that Rock ‘n’ Roll swagger.

The opener ‘Be So Bad’ is pure Rival Sons, and while it doesn’t quite explode like ‘Electric Man’ it simmers nicely with a steaming Andrew Knightley vocal and some confident, precise and edgy guitar from the enigmatic front man.

Knightley really takes you somewhere else in the wonderful ‘Gallows’, with its superb mid-section guitar led breakdown. Some great drumming from the wonderfully named Greg Zaka and the equally well named Wilson Zaidan, who wields a mean but subtle bass, makes this the best track on the EP for me.

‘Futility’ is defined by a solid and snappy snare beat that drives some lovely rifferama and turns a song that at first frames a somewhat predictable rock verse into a searing heat injected chorus.

I couldn’t help feeling that if I saw this band live, instead of just liking them, I would love them. I turned to some stuff on YouTube to get a sense of their live sound. This is where the lack of swagger comes in. As I said, they look and sound great but just feel that they’re holding something back. A bit more jois de vivre and a little more understated arrogance on stage will match their undoubted musicianship and craft.

I can see these guys on festival stages and doing good support slots to touring bands. They have the tools and they’d do well to emulate the likes of Rival Sons if they want to make the breakthrough I feel they have in them.

‘Eva Lane’ is the single from the EP with accompanying video and is probably more representative of what the band is about. For me though, the less obvious Blues/Rock tracks stand out and who knows, may lead the band in a more experimental direction in the future as illustrated so eloquently on ‘Gallows’.

I would have loved this to have been an album to get a real sense of the breadth of their songwriting. I’ll look forward to that, hopefully in the not too distant future. This five-track EP will have to do for the time being.

I don’t quite love this band yet, but I do like them a lot and would happily part with my hard earned to see them. In the meantime, I will satisfy myself with 'Hollywood To Vegas' and if this is your kind of thing, you won’t be disappointed.