Emo is such an overused term. I’ve never heard anyone call The Flaming Sideburns emo, because they most certainly aren’t. They are one-hundred percent rock and roll. A passion and fire exists in their music that you simply don’t hear in the mainstream today. With an opening song called “Save Rock And Roll,” you know the Sideburns are a band with a mission, and quite an obvious one. The album starts off with a distorted guitar riff and a scream of “All right!” and only gets better from there.
The Flaming Sideburns – Sky Pilots
The Flaming Sideburns originally claimed, after they were formed in 1995 in Sweden, that they passed through a time warp in 1965 after opening a show for Little Richard. Though this is, of course, not true, you would never know from listening to their music. A wild, fuzzy, angry,
very loud romp through fast songs that barely top four minutes in most cases, The ‘Burn’s songs are ideal garage rock: Short and to the point. The only song that deviates from this distorted pattern is the albums slow song, Drive On, which is good in its own right, featuring a piano and jangly guitar that have been lost since the sixties.
The completely unintelligible screaming vocals of Eduardo “Speedo” Martinez, the only member of the band from Spain, only add to the perfect garage rock feel of this album. When fuzzy distorted guitar riffs are added by Ski Williamson and Johnny Volume, the style just gets better. Jay Burnside adds drum lines consisting mainly of a vast array of cymbals, a snare drum, and a bass, but they manage to fit in perfectly with the band. Bass player The Punisher is sometimes overshadowed by the other members of The ‘Burns and is unable to be heard, but plays bass very well nonetheless. All of the elements of the ideal garage rock band are here: Raspy vocals, distorted guitar, wild cymbal filled drumming, and plenty of memorable hooks to be stuck in your head for a long time. If you like bands along the lines of MC5, The Stooges, The Hives, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, The Hellacopters, and The Nomads, you’ll
love The Flaming Sideburns.
The production on this album is extremely clean compared to other Flaming Sideburns albums, and it somewhat takes away from the wild, unfocused garage rock side. It’s not enough to be noticeable to the average person who has never listened to a Flaming Sideburns album before. If you’ve never heard them, then the production will sound just fine to you, but once you listen to another one you will realize that everything on this album seems a little bit more…complex, and not as uncontrolled as previous Sideburn’s efforts.
As with every album, there are a couple stand out tracks on Sky Pilots and a couple of duds. The standouts are, without a doubt, “Save Rock And Roll” and “Since The Beginning.” The worst song on this album is “Effect-O Tequila,” with its strange beat and odd, pseudo-surf rock guitars. The fact that the album is only a little over half an hour long is also disappointing, because more songs are always good.
The Bottom Line - Fast, punk-like garage rock with raspy vocals and fuzzy guitar makes for one enjoyable half hour album that has just one mediocre song. 4/5 from The Dylanettes.
