ELECTRIC BOYS – Shady Side Of Town (2025) *HQ*
Some bands look back at their early work and feel that they have to move on, others just get fixated on endlessly repeating themselves. Swedes ELECTRIC BOYS have chosen the best of both worlds – embracing the past but also managing to make it sound as fresh and exciting as ever.
And here we are, a couple of years on after their last full length, with an EP – ”Shady Side Of Town” – a scant four track affair, but dude, if short and good as this, twice good!
Opening up with ‘Head Honcho’ has all the hard rockin’ funk and swing you could want and a whisky-soaked vocal that punctuates the swagger. It’s a song that has all the hallmarks of the band’s early work, quirky lyrics, a cool breakdown and a groove to die for. But served with a dynamic, modern production.
Track two ‘Grand Explosivos’ underlines the feeling that this EP, even if not made up of tracks that didn’t make the album of that same name, are certainly sonic siblings. This is a song that jumps right in with crunch in the guitars before falling back onto a lighter tequila flavoured passage. It’s a light and shade that works particularly well and a solo to set the dusky Mexican night on fire.
‘Looking For Vajayay’ (surely we know where to find them by now?) adds a hypnotic chug of guitars to fuel a funky stumble through the streets of the shady side of town, in the eternal search for ‘vajayay’. It’s another winner but maybe the only song here that sounds like it maybe needed a little more time to simmer.
Final track ‘Keep It Dark’ is a great song, more classic rock than funky stew, it’s catchy as hell and sports a killer solo and lights the way hopefully for more from a band who whilst always delivering the goods over the years now seem capable of producing another masterpiece.
There’s few bands of a ‘certain vintage’ that seem so effortlessly capture the grace and excess of their youth.
EP of the year – no doubt about it.
01 – Head Honcho
02 – Grand Explosivos
03 – Looking For Vajayjay
04 – Keep It Dark
Conny Bloom – Vocals & Guitar
“Slim” Martin Thomander – Guitars
Andy Christell – Bass
Joel Atlagic – Drums
BUY
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FVXGCQCB
