Review Summary: Nick Lamb manages to cover at least three or four music styles in a span of an EP but will have to decide soon which way he wants to go.
The moment you start playing “Simple Man”, the introductory track on Nick Lamb’s EP Gettin’ High Off You, Simple Man, a plaintive singer/songwriter ‘standard’ ballad, the first that comes to mind is, uh oh, one more lonely troubadour. It is a very nice and pleasant tune, and sure enough, Nick has a very pleasant singing voice. But then, it is nothing that most of us haven’t heard before.
You start thinking where could he go from here, and when you will start searching for something to listen to, and then Nick hits you with “Getting High Off You” which immediately starts sounding like something Husker Du left of Candy Apple Grey. And that is the moment you start warming to Nick Lamb.
And then, judging by the title, you get the notion that with “Ballad of a Rebel” Nick is going to put back the accent on the ballad, he actually goes more for the rebel. When the song kicks in, you immediately realize that Nick had quite a few Judas Priest albums in his collection.
Still, Nick has a few more tricks up his sleeve. With “When I Close My Eyes” he lets us know that he comes from a small coal town in Pennsylvania and that his father was a locally known country and rock musician and that quite a few Merle Haggard records were floating around his home. He adds nice touches of electric guitar to the proceedings.
When “This Town” kicks in, you realize that Nick is using this debut opportunity to show everything he can do, as he takes the Southern rock route in search of The Marshall Tucker Band. “Rock n Roll’s My Road” delivers exactly what it implies, but again with some southern touches rolled over the Husker Du theme.
Ok, so you like quite of few musical genres that inspired you, but it is going to be extremely hard to play a musical chameleon on every album you make, particularly if you want to do it well. In the end, if rock n roll is truly Nick’s road, he should take it. Or maybe any of the three or four he has presented on Gettin’ High Off You, Simple Man it seems any of those could suit him fine.
