One Thousand Years sound like they’ve spent that accumulated amount of time listening to their dads’ record collections. And exactly why is that a bad thing? Rock and roll’s grim hold on the collective consciousness is eroding by the day so if bands like this West Australian quartet are going to fly the flag, who are we to complain?
The time is right for a resurgence of so-called Classic Rock (fuck knows, we’ve endured every other genre being reheated via the media.) It’s bands like this that should lead the charge. One Thousand Years play it straight and soulfully, with echoes of all the usual suspects (Led Zep, Black Crowes) and some local lights (Stars) thrown in. What they’re doing on Off The Hip is a mystery because they’re well-removed from the label’s usual garage fare.
The backstory is that One Thousand Years came together at university and the bulk of its membership has stayed the same while working their way through Perth’s music ranks. They’ve done it step-by-step, winning a talent contest and using Dom Mariani’s production smarts along the way. They put out an EP first and this debut album is self-produced.
These boys ply a time-honoured formula: Twin guitars on top of an engine room that’s aware of a thing called A Feel. Soul-tinged vocals. Songs that rock in all the right places. The opener, “Ready For Something”, is a fair indicator with all of the above plus some Thin Lizzy-style lockstep guitar-work. More of the same on “When The Sun Opens Its Eyes.”
It’s the less straight-forward songs that work best for mine. The harp-inflected blues-rocker “Voodoo”, the swaggering “Pandora” and the Deep-Purple-via-Hawkwind “Demoness”, with its organ and heavy bass-line, cut the mustard. “Demoness” pushes it into psych territory before invoking hard rock. “Helsinki Blues” brings on more heaviness with a dash of Queen pomposity.
There’s light relief in the gentle “Rock & Roller’s Delight” (it sounds like it was written on a tour bus somewhere in the US Midwest) and the harp-and-horns-assisted “American (Funk Jam)” goes off like Funkadelic.
You might think of “Get Your Rabbit’s Foot And Run” as a stop-off rather than a destination. One Thousand Years probably has better songs to write and more recordings to make. I appreciate what they've done and while they're not my daily cuppa, your own imbiding habits may very well differ.
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