It’s taken us too long to get around to Tush, a fairly new band (2023) which released the album ‘Thunder Road’ back in June.
They hail from Halmstad, half way down the Kattegat between Gothenburg and Malmö, a region I don’t believe we’ve had a featured artist from previously.
I had to suppress a smile at their name, at least what it means in English slang but it’s the sort of tag you might reasonably expect for a bunch of rockers whose promo shot has one of them perching his tush uncomfortably on a Harley Davidson while other band members look on like extras in Easy Rider.
Visually, everything about them suggests the past, and not the recent one. No, I mean the counterculture days of the late 1960s – Monterrey Pop, Woodstock, and the festival-cum-battlefield that butchered and buried the Summer of Love once and for all – Altamont – and the artists that starred in those pivotal, seminal shows – Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, Cocker, Janis, Canned Heat, Steppenwolf, Grateful Dead…
Some things just live on and never fade away and Tush make a pretty good fist of perpetuating that era and those that followed it until glam, looks, clothing, glitter, image and swagger replaced them in the 80s.
The message from ‘Thunder Road’ seems fairly clear – it’s the one and only exit route from a life of drudgery, that’s it’s name and all the other outlets are one way streets, they’re powering towards it as fast as they can and there ain’t no-one gonna stop them.
It couldn’t be called anything else, could it? Daisy Lane or Strawberry Fields Avenue wouldn’t really cut the mustard in quite the same way.
There are no arty-farty airs and graces about Tush. The riffs are simple but melodically pleasing on the ear. Ditto the drum patterns and the short bridge/guitar solo is exactly what you were expecting. No shocks. No disappointment.
It’s just plain and simple high energy, hard hitting rock and it’s great to hear a modern band churning it out. The sort of thing you’ll keep putting back on while you’re cruising down Ventura Boulevard into LA, or popping round to the local IKEA in Halmstad to pick up a new sofa bed.
I was a tad dubious about naming a song with the same title as a popular Bruce Springsteen hit but on reflection I don’t think it will do him much harm.
It certainly won’t do Tush any.
Find them on:
Website: https://tushrockband.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tushrockband
