Give It Time
The Revellions
April 7th 2014
Dirty Water Records
LP, CD, Download
Ireland's best band THE REVELLIONS are back with a brand new album on Dirty Water Records, five years since we released their eponymous debut. This is a band that, when seen live, are compelling, winning over audiences instantly, even those who aren’t familiar with their pounding psychedelic garage rock’n’roll style of music. Those of you who have their first album and who saw them play live on previous visits to London will be no doubt be counting down the days.
- Bitter & twisted - 3:31
- Sighs - 3:34
- Don't wait for me - 3:15
- Give it time - 5:13
- In vino veritas - 4:25
- Somewhere in between - 4:43
- Strung out bad - 3:42
- The waltz - 3:43
- Drip - 4:44
Press:
Here’s an album that starts relatively sedately, grows a brass section and descends into off-kilter garage rock hell. If that sounds like a dissing, think again.
The Revellions are from Dublin in Ireland and have made a nine-song album of two distinct halves. The first recalls, at times, Boston institution Lyres with its strong reliance on surging organ and wailing vocals, while the second goes to that noisy and mind-altered place where the Black Lips and The Oh-Sees reside. Soulful versus Trippy. Both bases covered.
The Revellions are back this week with their first album in five years on Dirty Water! These Irish garage-popsters are peddling a very authentically ’60s sound full of Hammond organ, jangly guitars and naively soulful vocals, often buoyed by some uplifting brass which gives it a slight British working men’s club kind of feel. Opener ‘Bitter & Twisted’ is very organ-heavy and reminds me of The Castaways’ ‘Liar Liar’, but when the brass gets involved it heads into territory somewhere between King Khan & the Shrines and King Salami, although to be fair this lot have a sound all of their own.
Yet another review of the brilliant new REVELLIONS album, this time from France’s Raw Power Magazine. Thanks to Monsieur Eric Baconstrip of King Salami and the Cumberland 3 for the translation into English:
GIVE IT TIME… The Revellions took quite some time to offer us the following opus to their brilliant first throw! 6 years after all…Even though the band came back in 2012 with a single, we thought they were gone again & its members were dispersed. Until we’ve heard about this imminent new album coming out!
The follow up to 2008’s eponymous debut from the Dubliners’ clearly hasn’t been without growing pains. One lost singer later and they are back. Should you care? If you have any interest in growly garage blues that mixes in The Music Machine with Beefheart then it’s an emphatic ‘yes’.
Finally, after a five year wait, The Revellions are back with their second LP, Give It Time, half soulful psych, half boozed out night. Opening with the jiving beat of ‘Bitter & Twisted’, the band set out their stall right up there with such garage-stalwarts as The Cynics, but they soon show that there’s a lot more to them. By the second tune, ‘Sigh’, they’re already rolling out the soul that in beds itself throughout the first side.
The arrangement of opening song "Strung Out Bad" builds anticipation from the soulful feel of the arrangement before procuring a true finesse in the progression that stays the course. This dutifully stirs the musical side with matched deliberation. Next comes "Don't Wait For Me". Picking up from the off, the addition of a brass section in the tempo gives it a lift while the charming run in the delivery tells a lot. An anticipated spirit pushes out on it that appropriately catches the tracking to bring it full circle.
Five years since their debut album was released, The Revellions are back. The question is, was it worth the wait? The quick answer: yes. The four piece from Dublin have produced an album that does not disappoint, it infuses all the band’s styles, garage rock, psychedelic rock and there are some bluesy elements to it as well.
The Revellions, on the other hand, sends their second LP in this month of March titled GIVE IT TIME (ref DWC1067) after the delay of five years after their first album and several modifications of formation.