THE QUILL – Live, New, Borrowed, Blue (2022)

With “Live, New, Borrowed, Blue” (Metalville Records) Swedish rockers THE QUILL are releasing a personal selection of unreleased song treasures from their long career, just before the band will go on club tour in Europe.
Digging through old boxes you find stuff you’ve totally forgotten about – and every once in a while you find old nuggets well worth rediscovering again. And when you’ve been active as a band for a long time, you always find songs that didn’t fit into the usual album format.
“Live, New, Borrowed, Blue” contains tracks from the sessions for their last album as well as some songs that THE QUILL recorded in the late ’90s for various tribute albums that are now long out of print. As a kind of icing on the cake, there are also two live tracks from the Sweden Rock Festival 2019, as a reminder of this fantastic performance.
By no means these recordings are outtakes, all are professionally recorded and produced, very good songs in their own right.

There’s plenty to like in this release. The selection of covers on this album (covering bands including Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, November & Captain Beyond) are really well done, staying relatively true to the original versions, but with enough of an original sound to make it an enjoyable listen. The list of bands covered also helps describe the Quill’s sound; an blend of classic rock and hard rock.

The live tracks on the album are well executed and help reinforce the quality of the band-faultless vocals and tight instrumentation is on show. A little taste of “Fairies Wear Boots” during their live meanderings in the rendition of “Hole in My Head” is a nice touch too.
Whist the covers are fun, and the live tracks are impressive, the original studio tracks “Keep on Moving” & “Children of the Sun” are the highlights of the release. “Children of the Sun” is especially great-classic in style and epic in its composition. Top marks.

If you’re a fan of classic sounding hard rock you could do far worse than give this album a play though. This sort of ‘leftovers’ album is generally tailor made for die-hard fans, not the case with “Live, New, Borrowed, Blue”, a solid, cohesive album of very good songs.
Highly Recommended

 

01 – Keep On Moving (Extended Version)
02 – S.O.S. (Too Bad)
03 – Children of the Sun
04 – Where Eagles Dare
05 – Keep It Together (Live)
06 – Mount Everest
07 – Burning Tree
08 – Frozen Over
09 – Hole in My Head (Live)

Vocals – Magnus Ekwall
Guitars – Christian Carlsson
Bass – Roger Nilsson
Drums – Dinghy Atlagic

 

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