Artist: Galaxy Safari
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Galaxy Safari's latest ups the yeeaaah quotient and sands off all the rough edges to give you a polished arena-rock turd. I thought their last album was pretty decent despite a few missteps; this one is almost nothing but once you get past the first couple tunes. Hard to believe at this point that some of these dudes used to be in legit hardcore acts, but I guess we just have different ideas about what it means to grow old gracefully. As for me, I'm just stoked that in a few weeks I'll be spending my 33rd birthday recording 4-track demo tunes with my punk band in someone's basement. Likewise, I'm also stoked that I never have to listen to this ever again.
- Avi Roig
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The type of music that Sweden's Galaxy Safari play can often fall into the abyss of boredom that only a handful of bands have successfully managed to escape. Big players like Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Unida and, to a lesser extent, Liberty 37 and Galactic Cowboys are all referenced here in one way or another and show that Galaxy Safari are adept at mimicking their outer influences and stamping their own initials on the outcome. However, an essential aspect that's quite often lost on a great number of bands attempting to follow this path is the concept of tempo variation and this is also a problem on "Star of the masquerade". The vast majority of songs on here follow the mid-upbeat tempo characteristic of this genre and it unfortunately detracts from an otherwise pleasing album. It's not so much that the album isn't enjoyable, rather it loses its potential impact by failing to address the need for variation in this area. Sure, tracks like opener "Save me" and "Far too long" kick the speed up a tad, but that's not exactly what it's about. It's about more divergence within the songs and without it we have an album that is disappointingly generic in feel and quickly tiring. It also, however, shows a band with the potential to pull a great recording out of the bag if they knuckle down and take some time to be creative instead of going for the quick fix.
- John Norby
Here's the playlist for this week's radio show Sirius XMU:
01. TALK 1
02. Mattias Alkberg - Andra känner
03. Darkthrone - Launchpad to nothingness
04. Mikkel Meyer - Kokostosca
05. TALK 2
06. First Band from Outer Space - Turn left to the Mexican barbeque
07. Kråkesølv - Privat regn
08. TALK 3
09. Galaxy Safari - Save me
10. Witchcraft - Samaritan burden
11. Bad Hands - Sonnenrad
12. TALK 4
13. Lapko - I shot the sheriff
14. Siena Root - Into the woods
15. Marvins Revolt - Siberia
16. TALK 5
Reminder: my show airs every week on Sundays and Mondays at 11pm ET on Sirius XMU. That's channel 26 on Sirius, 43 on XM and 831 for DirecTV subscribers.
Galaxy Safari aren't a "cool" band, but that doesn't mean they aren't good. They play workingman hard rock, an area far removed from all hype, but fuck it, I like burly riffs paired with pop hooks so I like them just fine. So yeah, if you dig stonerrock, but can't hang with stoner clichés, you'll dig this. If you like it when Foo Fighters are at their heaviest, you'll like this too. The band they remind of most though, is Speedball, an obscure act from Detroit that I think I read about on Aversionline or some other zine way back when. Speedball's "Drive like hell" EP kicks ass in a very similar way and it's been a longtime standby for me in my collection and also, now that I've looked them up, I'm surprised to find out they're still together, so yeah- further investigation is most definitely needed! But anyway, getting back to Galaxy Safari: there's no clever press ploy here, no flash, no gimmicks. Just four dudes playing heavy rock'n'roll, though I suppose it doesn't hurt to mention that the band features members from Victims and Daybreak even if the connection barely impacts the music.
Galaxy Safari - Save me
Galaxy Safari
Galaxy Safari
