Chesterfield Kings – Stop! (Full Album) garage rock, garage revival This time I agree with Greg Prevost and disagree with the Reverend. Of course, I didn't listen to it when it came out but much later... however, even though the quality of the songs is generally good (not great or exceptional), the sound’s power is below par; the drums, in particular, are pushed back, quite ridiculous. With the debut, there’s not even a comparison.
When in 2007 Greg Prevost confessed to me that he hated Stop!, it felt like finding myself under the beams of my house while the seismographs registered earthquakes right under my ass.
Because I had always considered it, and still do, an album of unreachable beauty. A classic of classics, a machine capable of stopping time. Inside, after indulging in Here Are and the first singles, there are the first songs signed by the band.
They sound like old masters from some obscure band of '66, ended up in some dumpster of the 4th Avenue or RCA studios.
The Chesterfield Kings are five drooling fans stuck to the muscles of sixties music.
They pass by leaving a milky foam.
And they become what they eat.
They are the Standells, then the Monkees, then the Turtles, the Sonics, the Royal Guardsmen, the Byrds, the Stones, Count V, Moving Sidewalks, Gonn, New Colony Six, Knickerbockers, Dave Clark Five, and finally the Chocolate Watch Band.
They don’t just plunder their songs, like everyone else does.
The Chesterfield Kings of Stop! ARE those bands.
They have realized the dream of every neo-garage band: to sound as if they were on stage at a battle of the bands in 1966. Bowl cuts and floppy fringes over a crowd of teenagers wild about rock ‘n’ roll. Any Saturday night in small-town America, after an episode of The Three Stooges and a joyride in Dad's car.
The Kings play like this, proudly displaying a commitment to stylistic and aesthetic standards that is terrifying, a legitimate reincarnation of the raunchy Rolling Stones of the mid-sixties, putting together a repertoire that is a distillate of the ravenous tastes of Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk.
A track like She's Got Time, for instance, is a blend of the Texan sound of the Exotics while I Cannot Find Her is a perfect marriage between the folk guitars of the Grass Roots and the vocal harmonies of the Monkees. She's Alright is a dive into the sound of Larry and The Blue Notes, the sweet swaying of Cry Your Eyes Out hides a bridge that leads to the castle of the 13th Floor Elevators while the vehemence of Say You’re Mine inevitably recalls the Beat Merchants, Cuby + Blizzards, or the rowdy Stones of Get Off of My Cloud.
The covers, as is tradition for the five from Rochester, are played with a skill well beyond the threshold of fanatical obsession. Stop!, Fight Fire, My Canary Is Yellow, and Bad Woman are spat out just like the originals by Burgundi Runn, Golliwogs, Namelosers, and Fallen Angels.
