Stray
Mudanzas

Stray was one of the minor groups that emerged from the seminal late sixties London movement known as British Blues, led by Cream, Free, Jeff Beck Group, Rolling Stones (after bluesman Mick Taylor replaced the psychedelic Brian Jones), and even Led Zeppelin. They held a four-member lineup of voice/guitar/bass/drums, led by guitarist and main composer Del Bromham.

Nothing special in their repertoire, an electric high-volume rock blues, straightforward and warm, streaked with some psychedelic tendencies and vaguely inspired by The Who and Free: this was the heavy music of the time, these were the loudest bands, many years before heavy rock music reached much more extreme levels. The lack of a strong personality and the modesty of vocalist Steve Gadd prevented them from going beyond an honest second-tier career, which still yielded about a dozen albums.

"Mudanzas" was released in 1973 as their fourth work, and perhaps the title (changes, in Spanish) refers to the massive use of the orchestra, not in terms of quantity but rather volume: brass, woodwinds, and strings often and willingly tend to overshadow the quartet's instruments, as present and deep as they are (they must have been recorded at Abbey Road... their sound rendering is lush!).

If we add to this the particular way of tuning the electric guitar sound of leader Bromham, making it float in an unusually vast and dreamy environment thanks to a microphone placement far from the speakers and deep reverb, it turns out that this record has its own unique sound, recalling the "analog" early seventies like perhaps no other. Which is a strong argument for those who are fed up with the precise, ever-present, glassy, and overly compressed rock productions of the nineties and 2000s.

Sure, there are no brilliant pieces or out-of-standard melodic ideas... However, there is a fully convincing track titled "I Believe It", which is an orthodox but remarkable slow blues in minor key, punctuated by the full-blast orchestral blaring mentioned earlier. The singer puts in a great effort to deliver his pleading verses over a delightful string background, and very valid and evocative is Bromham's long central guitar solo, making the amplifier tubes work, extracting overtones and harmonics, wide and musical double-string vibratos, in short, adding a great value to the piece with his inspired phrasing.

It is not the best record of these "Strays", especially due to the questionable mixing already mentioned and because the singer's performance, despite the little talent available, should have been better produced. Both the sound rendering and the consistency of ideas are, for example, greater in their third and previous work "Saturday Morning Pictures", which garnered considerable attention for the group without breaking through, as did this "Mudanzas" the work of these unknown rockers that I am more likely to listen to again, being very fond of "I Believe It".