Review Summary: A low-profile local band making its own contribution to the blues.
The Arc Riders' self-titled debut album projects the passion and dedication of it's main man Tony Cini to the blues. After performing with the Ginhouse Bluesband for 20 years around Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle, Tony decides to move in a new direction and forms The Arc Riders sometime during 1993 together with Rick Lum. Since then, Tony was relentlessly working to encapsulate his Gallagher-Hendrix influences in his music. Such was his admiration for the Irish bluesman that a cover of "Moonchild" appears right in the middle of
The Arc Riders.
Travelling via public transportation across the New South Wales all these years has given Cini the inspiration to write the boogie opening track of the record, "Illawara Train". Granted, the familiar train announcement of [...]"doors closing, please stand still" is one of the catchiest refrains of the album. Speaking of inspiration, "Rattlesnake Shake" shows the extent that Cini was influenced by his hero Rory Gallagher. The gutsy riff together with the canny use of the maracas to create an identical sound to that of the famous reptile is simply ingenious.
It becomes quickly obvious that story-telling characterises the majority of the lyrics in the album. "Jessica" tells the story of a young woman who has died in a car accident with Tony Cini showing the required empathy to such a loss, while "Immigration" is an auto-biographical track about his move to Sydney from Malta in 1954.
However, at the point where the listener is trying to comprehend all the decent efforts of the album's first half to create a bluesy ambience, there is a strange twist in the style of songs. With the exception of "Towers", a Zepellin-esque riff backed with some eerie hammond chords, there are three country-style acoustic tracks which are not particularly in line with the whole album. This makes the situation more difficult for the band todecide on a particular music genre to excel. Whether or not it will take another 40 years for The Arc Riders to fix their inconsistencies, depends on whether the Aussies consider
The Arc Riders as the start of their career or an album that serves as a personal achievement.
