Elegantly Wasted-Desolation Row

Flaco
2007



With all the hard rock/glam bands pouring out of Sweden and other places it almost seems a little shocking these days to find a young hard rock band that is actually from LA. Yet Elegantly Wasted are indeed based in LA and this is their second release. It took me several plays to really figure out what I thought about this one. It's likely that I was taken aback by the somewhat simple approach at first, but eventually it set in that this style works for this band. Sometimes a little is more than enough if you know what to do with it. This band sounds roughly like a mix between Guns and Roses and Stone Temple Pilots. That woulds be G-n-R back when they were about music instead of just about empty promises and STP say during their first two releases. The music is simple, but overall effective due to the fact that they know how to use their chops and they waste no time in moving the songs along. The vocals from Lenny J. were also consistantly appealing and managed to be both smooth or raw according to what the moment called for. Somehow this album sounds like a band who loved 80's hard rock, but unlike a lot of hard rock bands they were not put off by early-mid 90's rock as well. The two styles are not that different in some ways and this band took some of the stronger elements of both and blended them. No, the result is not overwhelmingly different from anything you have ever heard. However it's a bare bones rock album that actually rocks and I think that is all they are trying to accomplish. In a day of sometimes overpolished, overdone and overcomplicated music I found this album to be a fairly refreshing release that I will probably being loudly over the next few weeks.


http://www.myspace.com/elegantlywasted