In Your Face Rock
BrianO | Santa Monica, CA | 05/18/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Australia's Hoodoo Gurus are consistently inventive and lyrically smart. Their latest release, Purity of Essence, captures their distinctly kitschy and catchy style of garage rock and power pop with style, panache and a wicked sense of humor. Australian Rolling Stone's Toby Creswell recently gave the new album four stars, noting "one of the best unadorned rock records in recent years . . . Gurus at their finest with a hook-laden album that deserves mainstream recognition."
[...] said of Purity of Essence, "there is real fire here, both in the songwriting and especially the performance. It's a welcome return for an act that doesn't seem to have aged a day since its 1983 debut."
Along with the new album, and with tongue firmly in cheek, the band unleashed Must Travel on Wheels, a "mockumentary" series with references to Spinal Tap and Metallica's Some Kind of Monster, though the band themselves describe it as being more like "a dysfunctional Partridge Family or Curb Your Enthusiasm!"
Must Travel on Wheels takes a look behind the scenes of the Hoodoo Gurus and explores the way the band came together to record the album. Each episode contains a performance of a song from the new album accompanying the "making of" footage. It is a world's first: a real rock band has framed their album and videos around a fictional narrative. "I'd always wanted us to do a radio serial back in the band's early days," lead Guru Dave Faulkner says. "I imagined we'd do an episode with a new song each week, something written especially for the show. Finally, after all this time I've realized my fantasy though here I get to be Fellini with this `rockumentary,' or whatever it is." Reality television has never been so unreal.
These much-mythologized Aussies remain as relevant and impassioned about their distinctive brand of rock 'n' roll as at any time in their 25-year career. Five stars - Brian O
The band's Must Travel on Wheels trailer here:
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Best in years
Daniel Raymont | 05/11/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Dave Faulkner may have lost his hair but his voice sounds as strong as ever. I was very pleasantly surprised as I was not a huge fan of Mach Schau. Purity of Essence is their most solid outing in a long time. Track 6 Ashamed of Me is perhaps my favorite. If you like The Hoodoo Gurus you will probably like this. They may be older but they have not lost a step in their sound."
Twenty-seven years on the Hoodoo Gurus still rock
hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 05/18/2010
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Nearly three decades after this Australian band debuted on college radio with Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs Guitars, changes in the line-up, break-ups and reformations, hiatuses, and one member's recovery from cancer haven't dimmed the group's energy. Fronted by singer-songwriter Dave Faulkner, the band's more soulful than in their earlier years, and though they're not as playful in doling out rapid-fire pop-culture references, they're still plenty of fun and, best of all, they rock. The band packs many styles into this hour-long, sixteen song album. There are Stones-y rockers ("What's in it for Me?"), Clash-styled martial beats ("A Few Home Truths"), lumbering twang that suggests a meeting of Lee Hazlewood and Neil Diamond ("Over Nothing?"), retro soul ("Only in America") and country-rock ("Somebody, Take Me Home").
Faulkner's early songs keyed on the immediate fascinations of a twenty-something, but in his fifties he writes more from a life lived. The first single, "Crackin' Up," considers the pressure of stardom and the feeling of being handled as a commodity. Faulkner wanders without nostalgia through his back pages on the burning Oingo Boingo-styled rocker, "Burnt Orange," and sees his adult friends' fascinations (religion, plastic surgery, meditation) as hang-ups on "I Hope You're Happy." The penultimate "1968" rocks with a terrific garage-psych sound, and "The Stars Look Down" closes the album with startled thoughts of mortality. It's a fitting finish to an album that finds the Hoodoo Gurus' navigating the realizations of middle-age without letting them break their rock `n' roll spirit. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]"
Track Listings (16) - Disc #1