Love On Ice
Nude
Interscope
What a nice little package we have here outta Portland. Nude is a tight set of tunes (13, all under 5 minutes per) that captures a quality I like to see, and that’s a band’s ability to create different moods within their songs. Or even, as on Mine, different moods within one song.
Live, this band has already long proven itself amidst the elite of our city and hence has many devoted fans up here. They won’t be let down at all by this sorta major label debut with the full-on Don’t Leave Me as the lead-off ingle and the funky backbeat, quiet voices and mellow strum that starts the whiningly aggressive Leave Me Alone, the head-bobbing scamper of Goodbye and the perpetually crowd-pleasing Foot In The Grave.
In addition to these great straight-aheads, they also side-step nicely with the hopeless emotion of Gone Away and the knee-slappin’ hoedown, Country Boy. Self In Blue is a good indicator of their 70’s ‘Smithish roots. I get a vibe from these guys and with their early Van Halen style eccentricities, this just may be the next hugely successful arena band from the Northwest. See what you think.