Savoy Motel

 There's this song, "So What" by Hidden Fees that I love. It's catchy, it's cool, it's party rock and it feels like the Stones at their funkiest. (Mostly the vocals. That's pure Jagger, all day.) Upon further investigation on my music app, I found that these guys only have one song available! A track off of their single from 2014. (Should I hold my breath for more future releases? It's looking grim...)

The feeling of this - bright pinks and golds through a vaseline covered lens; a 70's do where use of drugs is as commonplace as the key bowl by the door - also took me to another track I planned on exploring: "Sorry People" by Savoy Motel. (I urge you to listen to both tracks. You'd have to be dead inside to regret doing so.) I looked up Savoy Motel and low and behold: albums! Two, to be exact. 2016 and 2020: four years apart. Leading me to believe that it wouldn't be entirely silly of me to cross fingers for more product. 

So here it is! Put your hands together for: Savoy Motel. 

Savoy Motel
2010's - current
rock
first song that reeled me in: "Sorry People" Savoy Motel, 2016

Savoy Motel / Self-Titled (2016)
"Souvenir Shop Rock" gives us the couldn't-be-bothered sass and 'tude of "Sorry People". With a backing of almost Dr. Dog / T Rex qualities. A very welcome and very cool start to the album. I can already tell this is going to be an on-loop album. One you can "leave in the CD player" of your car and fall back on whenever the radio isn't serving up the right stuff. And how fitting, as this collection very much embodies the feeling of driving around, leaned back with your visor down and your black-framed sunglasses on. Track four, "Doctor Cook" invites you to roll down the window and lean your arm on the door. As "Mindless Blues" and "International Language" take you on a tour of the greater seventies sleaze. 

Love Your Face (2020)
Giving us a Bowie-esque throwback intro (think: "Changes"), "Wilson Jacqueline" is very much an easy link between the two albums. And much like Bowie did throughout his career, Savoy Motel has really adopted a different personality - while still paying homage to their seventies / nostalgic origin. Where their self-titled collection was more the brassy and bubbly side, Love Your Face is a little deeper/heavier in sound, a little more of that throaty, Sanford and Son funk. The namesake track takes us from the wild and crazy party of the previous company and leads us to the outdoor hot tub. Clumsily taking off its kimono robe through a subdued drug haze. "Mouth to Ear Music" has sounds that give us a cross between the mystical, Mordorian Zeppelin and some kind of young, Renaissance Fair Bowie. 

Although this album seems like the natural progression from the last, I do prefer the last. Their 2016 release has much more punch and definition, in my mind. Love Your Face lacks any true standout tracks, by comparison - simply sounding like a muted amalgamation of every cassette my mother and father ever had. I wouldn't hate hearing this album, however. Especially at a party where you could test your friends to see if they could tell what decade the album actually came out of.