Blackstrap-Steal my horses and run

Teepee
2008

Sweden's Blackstrap play a fuzzy style that depends as much on pop-like melodies as it does on simple, straight forward guitar riffs. The vocals (both male and female) and the instruments primarily sweep in like large blasts and almost everything tends to shift all at once. The vocals and the overall slick feel remind me more of the late 80's-early 90's yet the music of course carries a huge early 1970's rock feel at it's core. I definitely hear Zeppelin, Deep Purple and others down below the layers here. Blackstrap do a fine job of creating at songs that are perhaps deceptively simple. A lot of the songs seem basic at first listen, but if you focus in you will catch the subtle changes that allow the songs to expand and grow. They also handle acoustic passages with as much ease and comfort as they do with the other passages. The aspect I enjoyed most about this album was that I felt almost immediately comfortable with just about every track. I think that is perhaps due to the honesty they put into their music and the confidence they display in what they doing. I found "Steal my horses and run" to be the kind of disc that you could be very used to and even stuck on after just one or two plays. It's not necessarily a very involved album nor does it have to be considering all that they manage to accomplish with ease. Certainly an album that I would want to listen to at any given time.

http://www.myspace.com/blackstrap001