Early on in Electricity , the new disc from Sun Zoom Spark, there's a sample of spoken dialogue from the soundtrack to Message to Love, the documentary of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. And though this was released in 2003, Sun Zoom Spark sound like a band that you might have heard at the bottom of the bill at a festival like that, or perhaps at an underground festival from the era that made the Isle of Wight events seem mainstream. It's a murky, sullen blend of dark blues-rock, early-'70s hard rock, and jam-oriented space rock, with bits of pop and swamp pop cropping up occasionally. Sometimes the group sound a like a somewhat more melodic Stooges, with the vocals combining the insouciance of Iggy Pop, Fred Cole, and Jonathan Richman, as strange as that might be to envision. There's more variety than many such bands feature, too, going into some creepy minor-keyed numbers combining swamp pop, Nick Cave's lounge/after-hours musings, and punkish blues, as on "Falling from Satellites." In the spacier numbers, they sound like descendants of the Hawkwind school, with further resemblances to the psychedelic-hard rock musings of fellow Arizona combo Black Sun Ensemble (not surprising, since there has been some collaboration and overlap in membership between the groups). Further obfuscating easy pigeonholes, at times they borrow from the Byrds' jangle "Loaded" and also cover Syd Barrett's "Here I Go." But the songs do tend to meander off into long, extended riffs and instrumental sections. There are some cool, darkly menacing aspects to this record, but they could have benefited substantially from more conciseness.
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