Things are looking up in Holland. Not only are
‘older’ bands such as Kayak, Supersister and Plackband starting a
‘second’ life; after the demise of the SI label several years ago and
the lack of interest in names such as Wings of Steel, For Absent Friends,
Egdon Heath, Cliffhanger some new and promissing bands have surfaced. One of
them is Nice Beaver whom with “On dry land” have delivered a mature,
well-produced and nicely balanced debut album. The sounds of heavy traffic
and drilling machines in the beginning of ‘Culley on Bleeker street’
make me think of the sleeve for Supertramp’s “Crisis ? What crisis ?”
album. However once the main melody kicks off resemblances with Camel are
high on the cards. Especially the guitarsound of Hans Gerritse is
reminiscent of Andy Latimer. What strikes me from the beginning of this album
is the nice sound of the drums next to the fact that all four members of the
band also sing which results in
some nice harmonies as we can witness during ‘Oversight’. Another
important point in the music of Nice Beaver is the strong voice of
keyboardplayer Erik Groeneweg whom in a song like ‘Wintersong’, sounds a
lot like A-Ha frontman Morten Harket ! Towards the end the arrangement
sounds really strong and it would have been fantastic if the band could have
used a real orchestra for this section even if the entire structure of the
song is rather repetitive. ‘Hope you don’t mind’ not only contains
some great productional finds, the rhythm in the second part of the song
makes sure this song is destined to become a live favourite. The same can be
said of the stompin’ intro for ‘Like this’ before the atmosphere
switches towards a soft reggae rhythm before it changes a final time into a
rousing rhythm. The most melodic tune sits right at the very end. ‘We are
the sun’ contains a nice melody on synth accompanied by heavy guitars
creating yet another musical contrast. After several spins I still don’t
understand what the Turkish wedding is doing right at the very end though. Reviewed by John ‘Bobo’ Bollenberg |
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