Rival Sons at Z7 Pratteln - 13 July 2015

Close your eyes at a Rival Sons concert and you'd be excused for thinking that it's the 1970s. While you're listening, your mind's eye conjures up jeans flares, platform shoes, long beards and audience members muttering "far-out, man".

California's Rival Sons are flag bearers for the kind of rock perfected by Led Zeppelin, Free and Bad Company. Add a dash of Pink Floyd guitar distortion on their song Good Things and a soupçon of The Doors on Rich And The Poor and you have the recipe for some seriously groovy music.

Rival Sons' fourth album Great Western Valkyrie, released in 2014, has taken them all over the world, with stopovers in Switzerland three times in the last half year alone, the Z7 in Pratteln being the most recent.

The quintett deliver a no-nonsense, straightforward blues rock set, with singer Jay Buchanan alternately belting and caressing his way through the songs. How he manages not to destroy his voice with his full-on, raw approach is a mystery. Guitarist Scott Holliday, drummer Mike Miley, bassist Dave Beste and touring keyboardist Todd Ögren-Brooks rip through the songs with panache, evoking the good ol' times.

The band's ferocious playing leaves no room for compromise - Buchanan especially seems fully immersed in the music, walking, tip-toeing, dancing around on stage barefooted. Mind you, it's so hot in the venue that half the audience are barefoot as well.

The songs range from Where I've Been, a beautiful slow ballad that shows off the mellow side of Buchanan's voice, to glorious belter Open My Eyes, to hip-wiggling closer Keep On Swinging. The epic Torture lasts a good eight minutes, going from bluesy honky-tonk to solid rock to adrenaline-fuelled call-and-response between audience and band.

Once again, Rival Sons prove that they are the high priests of today's blues rock.

Setlist:

Electric Man

Good Luck

Secret

Pressure And Time

Good Things

Manifest Destiny, Part 1

Torture

Tell Me Something

Where I've Been

Rich And The Poor

Open My Eyes

Drum Solo

Belle Starr

Keep On Swinging

(Source: setlist.fm)

More photos on flickr.