The Sick Rose

Reviews

The Sick Rose Dont’ Give Me Up Now / A Golden Boy 7″

Long-running Italian garage rock crew SICK ROSE released a two-song 7″ with the A-side covering the LYRES’ “Don’t Give It Up Now,” featuring guest vocals from Dom Mariani of Australia’s the STEMS. This version is faithful to the original, but Mariani’s delivery and the production give it extra punch. Flip it over and “A Golden Boy” channels a breezy mash of ’60s/’70s rock, toe-tapping and driven by a guitar/organ attack straight out of Sixteen Flights Up-era CYNICS. They play the kind of throwback retro rock that frequently makes my eyes roll, but here it seems more substance than style and it works for me. Only 300 copies pressed, so grab one fast.

The Sick Rose Shaking Street LP reissue

This record, originally coming at the tail end of the ’80s revival of garage (you know, before the ’90s and then ’00s revivals, etc.) doesn’t necessarily live up to the billing of this quintet as one of Italy’s “most devastating” garage bands. I won’t fault these songs for a flaw in marketing though, because it does hit my sweet tooth for jangly guitar rock with some echoes of the ’60s freakout bands and an undeniably ’80s pop finish. Not quite the Paisley Underground, not quite America’s scum rock take on garage, and not quite the sparkling crystalline sound of New Zealand, this stands on its own rare ground and merits. A tune like “A Kiss is Not Enough” drives along like 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS premiered on college radio between a REPLACEMENTS song and R.E.M. Normally I wouldn’t throw so many bands together to describe someone’s sound, but it does flip a switch I wasn’t expecting. Then the band goes full time machine with the tambourine-accented and nicely-druggy “Don’t Keep Me Out.” It’s a great synthesis of eras and styles that mostly hit, even while not necessarily tapping the raw aggression other garage revivalists. This is fairly buttoned-up with hooks aplenty. European cool, I guess they call that.

The Sick Rose Faces LP

One of the better garage bands, the SICK ROSE had a single out a while back and like this LP, they’ve got the ’60s sound down but they also manage to throw in a taste of their own into the music so it’s not just an American ’60s sound, just influenced by it. Maybe somewhere between the CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND and THE SEEDS.