King Swamp, featuring vocalist Walter Wray, was a bare bones rock outfit that hailed from London. Their self-titled debut effort was released in 1989, and it got off to a quick and promising start with the minor hit, “Is This Love”. If you listened to radio at the time, you will recognize this track (which has nothing to do with the Whitesnake or Survivor hits of the same name).
In addition to “Is This Love”, this CD has several other solid rock tunes that should have been bigger hits than they were. Walter Wray sounds like a rougher and tougher version of Michael Hutchence (INXS), backed by a foot-stomping rock band. And instead of a sax player, they have a bustin' harmonica player. Several of the tracks have keyboards giving the tracks that mid to late 80s feel (check out "Original Man" and "The Sacrament"), which is a good thing in my book. Others are more acoustic driven, like the groovy "Widders Dump" and moody "Man Behind the Gun". Like always, my favorites are picked based on hooks and melody, and those tracks are highlighted below for you. Several other tracks are good too, but require a few spins to begin to sink in; "The Mirror" and "Blown Away" fall into this category for me.
They released a sophomore record called “Wiseblood” in 1990, but word on the street is that it isn’t as strong as this one. It is cheap to find out – buy both King Swamp releases for pennies at Amazon.com.
iPOD-worthy: 1, 3, 4, 6, 10
Walter Wray on MySpace. King Swamp official site.
Check out the video for "Blown Away":
No comments:
Post a Comment