Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
F.E.A.R. as an acronym works well in our current state of human existence, and yet most will see it as an instruction to turn tail, to quit when the going has not only gotten hard, but more challenging a period of instability and cruelty of spirit than perhaps we have faced in the last 80 years; instead the approach, which is just as difficult, even as testing, but ultimately more satisfying, is to rise and meet the gruelling tasks head on.
To Rise Above It All might seem an incredible ask, the waves of fortune have not been on our side in the last few years, and the seeds that were sown long before public health took a battering are still blowing in the wind and spreading disaffection and qualities of dishonour and destruction everywhere, they are loose, they are falling on fertile ground and ignorant hearts, and the only thing we can do in response is to hold firm, to stare down the negatives and the down beaters and face everything and rise…to Rise Above It All.
Such a response is possible when the drum beats and the guitar is able to satisfy the mood, and in the realm of The Georgia Thunderbolts and their exciting, exhilarating new studio album, Rise Above It All, the words of prophets are spoken with a sizeable voice, the exuberance of damning opposition to their rightful parts of Hell, and in true style convict those that sponsor despondency to another realm entirely; such is the feat of progression and the ability to have taken in their stride all that has come their way since their epic beginning, to suggest they do anything but storm the aural pleasures of the mind is an absurdity.
Tracks such as Rock And Roll Record, Moonlight Play, Ain’t Got No Money, Crawling My Way Back To You, Whiskey Talkin’ and the finale of Pricetag, showcase just how they dealt with adversity as the world around them screamed and muted in equal energy, and as their new recording fills the air, so does the sense of rebellion against the beige, the boring, the baneful take hold in the spirit.
Despite coming to term during a period of unrelenting self-vanity in the world, The Georgia Thunderbolts have come of age with this new album, a celebration of a movement that sparks music revelations and revolutions.
The Georgia Thunderbolts release Rise Above It All on 23rd August via Mascot Records. Ian D. Hall