Imperial State Electric
All Through the Night

The retro rockers are coming thick and fast these days, it seems to be the thing to do today – music that is “inspired” by music of the past. Imperial State Electric offers catchy classic styled rock music that will bring on a sense of déjà vu in the mind of the listener. Especially if the listener have been enjoying this kind of music before. Cool cover artwork and music that could keep you going all through the night, or perhaps not as this feels a tad familiar from first glance.

One cannot really claim that Imperial State Electric is an original band, their music feels more like stolen from albums in my parents’ record collection than new compositions. The productions feels somewhat fresh yet not quite up to date and in the end we find ourselves looking at an album with familiar and catchy songs that are well performed and very good. It is hard to argue away the quality of this album, they certainly come out well with their less is more approach to their songs. Unfortunately the less is more approach is not as interesting when looking at the creative side of things – you don’t really need to muster up much creativity to make a few albums like this one a year, it probably takes longer to play the songs than to write them.

This may be a great album in all its glory but the cover art reveals what it is about, something from old geezers dreaming of past glories. You should be impressed by remakes of superhero-movies, or all that other bollocks that Hollywood is churning out nowadays, if your dream is a Batman vs. Superman vs. some other Marvel hero movie I would say that this is a great album for you as it doesn’t really require a connected brain to be enjoyed. In fact, the requirement is probably that you should not analyse what you listen to like I do as most albums feels flat when you do. I did actually like this album a fair bit at first and was almost ready to give it a high rating and write some positive things about it, until I grew tired of it and that happened before I even played through the entire album once.

Don’t get me wrong, this album works and the songs are rather good but the problem is that others have already done these songs and done it better, and had there been a copyright in sounds they would have been nailed for copyright infringement long ago. I think this album is about as creative as its longevity and I doubt it will even last all through the night, but their fans will like it.

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