Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
If you can use a title of a James Cagney film within your own band name, then it is surely to be assured that the ignition point of delivery is set high and is always on point.
Lions In The Street come roaring out from the studio fully loaded with their album Moving Along in their arsenal, the quivers full of pride, and the swagger of the music rampaging through the long grass with full and frank effect.
The Vancouver/San Diego foursome, brothers Chris and Jeff Kinnon, Sean Casey, and Enzo Figliuzzi have survived much, some of it intolerable in the modern age when it comes to determining one’s own future and being shut down because their vision didn’t align with another’s perceived entitlement, and yet as warriors in spirit are apt to do, they don’t just come out fighting, they aim with precision at the target and remove it completely from their view, not wishing to spend any more time than necessary in dealing what was, instead giving their all into determining a sound that snarls and reverberates throughout the musical jungle.
It is survival, and with perhaps a fitting part of rock anger and retribution, that sees the band’s Moving Along exemplify exactly what they have aimed their sights upon, that of departing from the narrative they have suffered, and accelerating their own sound, catching maybe with where they should have been, but more importantly striving to be a group of musicians that the wider world can take notice of. This approach is stunningly courageous, and it works absolutely in design and groove.
Across tracks such as Mine Ain’t Yours, Gold Pour Down, Waiting On A Woman, the superb Hey Hey Arlene, You’re Gonna Lose, and the smashing Shangri La, the foursome blow the minds of all, regret is never dismissed, but it is also a weapon of security in which they fill the moments of once filled silence with a sense of glory, of undeterred language and a hark back to classic rock and roll.
Others may try to force you into obscurity, but the lesson to take from this terrific album, is that integrity will always win out, and that the prize for honesty and honour is to be seen as elegant victors in a fight against the insufferable and the murky waters of the mean-spirited. A classic album produced in difficult circumstances and one that outweighs the whimpers of lesser beings.
Ian D. Hall