Diamond Nights – Popsicle

Diamond Nights – Popsicle / 2005 Kemado / 12 Tracks / http://www.diamond-nights.com / http://www.kemado.com / Reviewed 18 October 2005

With proper amounts of Rush, Boston, and Kansas thrown into their first track “Destination Diamonds’, Diamond Nights cement their title as the newest band playing the arena rock of the seventies. Essentially, the music contained on “Popsicle” could be found in the record collection of any random rock-loving forty-year old; the only thing that really delineates it from the rest of the music that it is comparable to is an exponentially better recording than anything else from the era. The arrangement of “Saturday Fantastic” really shows Diamond Nights as a band that deserves comparison to both The Darkness and Sahara Hotnights; like the former, the arrangements present on the album are absurd, while like the latter the music is crafted without a hint of irony.

Riffy guitars flirt with sultry vocals and confident drums to make each track a single. Moving into a style of hard rock that is Led Zeppelin meets Queen at both of their peaks during “Drip Drip”, the multiple vocals that bolster the lead really shine above the work-horse arrangements, which seem to take more than their fair share from Fugazi’s playbook. Where most of the impressive feats on “Popsicle” were vocal, the building orgasm of the guitars during the end of “It’s A Shokka” will cause listeners to rewind the disc more than a few times to get the full beauty of the track. Morgan’s vocals during “Red Hex” seem to be a Zappa/Alice Cooper mishmash, while the rest of the band throws in on what can only be compared to the shrill vocal accompaniment found on AC/DC tracks.

The incorporation of an artificial, synth-driven beat to “The Girl’s Attractive” really ties in well with the new found glory of the Billy Idol inflection that Morgan finds during the track. In actually, the track sounds enough like “Rebel Yell” to confuse more than its fair share of casual listeners. Where Diamond Nights hit hard with their “Once Were Diamonds” EP, it may just be during this full-length that the true glory of the band shines. The tracks are all devoted, extensive studies into the psyche of hard rock music; to create five+ minute tracks without falling into any sort of self-parody or tired rehashes shows a maturity that will fuel this band hopefully through a number of later discs. The slower tempo of “Snakey Ruth” can even be tolerated; like a mixture of “Riders on The Storm” and earlier, post-Beatles rock the track has a seductive nature to it that really puts a cherry on top of Diamond Nights’ “Popsicle”.

Top Tracks: It’s A Shokka, Destination Diamonds

Rating: 7.3/10

[JMcQ]