Clutch
Earth Rocker
No
surprises but plenty of alarms on Clutch’s
zillionth – and possibly best – album, Earth
Rocker. Clutch have been making grooving, riff-laden trucker rock for ages
now. They know what formula works for
them; and, boy, do they stick to it. The
opening title track sets the scene with a rolling riff that explodes into a
pounding chorus. They slow down only
once, for acoustic twanger ‘Gone Cold’ (which sounds an awful lot like one of
the mellower entries in Kyuss’ back
catalogue – but no harm in that). The
rest is pretty relentless high-octane stuff, packed full of stupid lyrics and
dance inducing riffage. Every time that I
have cut the grass this year, I’ve done so with this album as the soundtrack to
the mower – I swear it speeds up the process significantly. No different to any other Clutch album, other than that the
quality is a bit higher and the tracks are more consistent. Far from a classic based on any objective
assessment, but one of the most fun rock records of the year.Sample track: ‘Earth Rocker’