Album Review by Michael Fawley
(The) Chrome Flies are a cocktail of musicians with all the right connections. Erstwhile drummer Matt Chamberlain has worked with the likes of Bowie and Garbage, bassist Paul Anthony was with the Kid Rock band and the current drummer is none other than Jeff Ehrenberg (aka Jef Leppard). Other contributors to the album include the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and an arranger with Stevie Wonder credits in his account.
The music is standard guitar pop fare nodding heavily to the mid-90s Britpop wave and accordingly as middle of the road as so much of Britpop was. Not so much the attitude and agenda of Oasis and the Manics as the mid-tempo melodies of Teenage Fanclub and Mansun. Despite some, for want of a better adjective, nice tunes and some catchy choruses a lá BLACK and PART, it is all a far cry from the White Stripes-led abrasive garage rock spilling out of Detroit at the moment.
Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe not, but nowadays it’s not often you find bands from the States with sounds rooted so much in the UK of a few years ago. Chrome Flies will hopefully flutter back with a sound a bit more daring and little less, well, nice.
