Being accommodating and hard working musicians, Shabby Rogue try and be all bands for everyone by lending their hand to a host of styles. Their second outing By Hook And By Crook spreads on a thicker layer of Romantic Folk cliché and ticks off every box on the rustic charm checklist: weathered wilds, Bohemian living, the wandering outsider and of course, hard liquor; which sounds good…
As track after track turns into tick after tock, Shabby Rogue become grey and inconsequential and the record, an impassionate assortment of oddity. The songs all reflect a hobo chic with foot stomping rhythms and classic 60’s guitar. During ‘Old Man’ the lead singer (they all share vocal spots) despairingly lurches into the bland heartache of American Rock and ‘Tales From the City’ is dangerously close to a ditched Kasabian number.
The record is not without a few left field moments: The unexpected shift in gear towards the end of ‘Jack in a Box’, the complex song-in-song structure of ‘Reason’ serve as tantalising fragments of possibility. These happenings are few and far between.
Even the distorted Folk-Punk fusion – or hillbilly punk, I haven’t quite decided – of ‘My Life As A Secret Agent’, a feverish injection of The Troggs style Rock n’ Roll is forcibly jabbed into the middle of a comparatively demure and conventional album (Chosen as their debut single, ‘My Life…’ received some airtime on national radio, ushered in by an ever present demand for authentic retro.)
Alas, the dusty roads that Shabby Rogue walk along have been flattened by the feet of many before. A no-bollocks-approach to recording may have evolved in the studio but (they vaguely admit this themselves) constricting funds, time restrictions and “substance abuse” hindered their final product. The low fi violence and raw live realism they were aiming for is definitely missing and while some bands benefit from slap dash studio work, Shabby Rogue need a better starting point to capture their respected live set on tape.
(© Copyright 2010 Brendan Morgan)
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