A buddy and I are headed to St. Louis this weekend to watch a Blues game, and while we know they suck as a professional hockey team we’re hard-pressed to find a reason to pass up free VIP seats to any sporting event. Mostly because of the free beer.
The Blues chose their team nickname because the city has a rich musical history (check out BB’s Jazz, Blues, and Soups if you’re ever in the area—great music, and the best damn muffaletta I’ve ever eaten), and up-and-coming alt-rock group Cavo is helping to keep that tradition alive with their 2009 album, “Bright Nights, Dark Days.”
These St. Louis natives burst onto the scene in 2008 with “Champagne,” which has the same grit and honesty of the really good early Puddle of Mudd stuff. Not bluesy by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to get serious airplay on the local radio stations and generate enough buzz to get inked to a major label in Reprise Records.
So “Champagne” is the first track on their first full-length album, followed by my personal favorite, “Crash,” which we featured in a recent Jukebox, and “Let it Go,” the next single that also appeared on the Transformers 2 Soundtrack. From there the rest of the album does what a radio-friendly alt-rock record is expected to do—plenty of catchy power chords and rock ballads and memorable hooks, etc. Bottom line: the whole record rocks. Every track sounds like a single. It makes you wonder how what these guys are doing is any different from what the wildly successful Daughtry is doing. It’s the same basic thing with about 30% less pop, which I guess makes it simultaneously more credible in the music community and less popular in the 13 to 18-year-old demographic. Okay, so I guess that explains it. Ho-hum.
Yes, I’ll be spending the weekend singing the blues over the horrible hockey I’ll be viewing, but the car ride down is going to be very upbeat, thanks in large part to the Cavo album I bought a couple of weeks ago. If nothing else, it’s going to be great driving music. The Blues may suck, but rock will never go bad.
Buy the album:
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lala
LikeB.o.B. featuring Bruno Mars – “Nothing on You”
Something about this track makes us feel like we’re back in the mid-‘90s, probably one of the summer months. No, definitely one of the summer months. But then the song gets warped through a time machine and resurfaces in 2010, fresh and clean and maybe full of ice crystals. We’re assuming the journey through space and time is a cold one. Ice crystals or no ice crystals, this is a head-bobber. Nineties-tested, Fresh-Scouts-approved.
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Cavo – “Crash”
At first you’re all, “This is a nice little rock track I guess.” Then you’re all, “Oh, some harmonies? How quaint.” And you tap your toes and slap your palms on your knees soberly to the beat. That’s when the hook hits and then you’re all, “Holy crap!” Then you stop talking to yourself and go download the song because it’s awesome. And you all lived happily ever after.
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J. Cole – “Lights Please”
This is the track that got J. Cole signed to Jay-Z’s label, and it’s a generally safe motto that if it’s good enough for Jay-Z, it’s good enough for us. And why not? The beat rolls like drifting lava in a warm lamp while J. Cole flows over the beat with a sort of Lupe Fiasco pinash. True hip-hop right here, folks. Like we said, if it’s good enough for Jay-Z, it’s good enough for us.
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