Modesto

Something a bit left-field for this blog in this post. This is a band with influences from blues to desert rock that are starting to make a racket, both figuratively and literally. Some useless facts for you; Modesto is a city in Stanislaus County, northern California. It is known for being the setting of American Graffiti, being rated as one of the worst places to live in the U.S., the home town to one of my favourite bands: Grandaddy and most importantly here; the band I am going to discuss today.

Modesto are a rock band with some amazing americana influences. Formed in 2011 out of the ashes of the band "Jack of Speed", the band are a tight three piece consisting of Mike Sleeman, Dan Stuart and Rhys Waters. The group have listed The Black Keys, Wilco and Queens of The Stone Age amongst their influences. Although I have mentioned a few blues bands on this blog before, I haven’t really gone into desert rock before. In a way this genre is real American music; sunshine, distorted California rock and Modesto do it well. You can feel the heat of the sun in some of these songs. One of my favourites is "Easy Come and Easy Go". It starts off with a lovely lazy rhythm and the almost poppy guitar hook before breaking into a frantic blues led lick for the verse. The chorus is my favourite part, with that heavy distortion, it could go on for days and I would be happy.

This year the band are concentrating on gigging and getting their music out there. There is quite a good selection of tracks on their soundcloud page. One track ("God Damn") even sampling Senator Clay Davis from the Wire. Props to Modesto for that!

The latest track released by the band is another piece of sharp, tight, blues rock. Led by a rockin' riff, with a lovely poppy vocal hook outro, the track demonstrates potential for these three lads to become the Irish equivalent to the Black Keys or better...

The bands next scheduled gig is the Mercantile on the 7th October. In the meantime you can listen to their great music repeatedly on the Soundcloud and peruse their Facebook page and their nicely designed official website.