MAVERICK MAGAZINE

A diverse debut album of highly polished West Coast pop-rock.

THE VIOLET HUSH gets off to a rousing start with a title track full of jangling guitars and powerful low key drumming as Johnny Bennett tell us that he’s ‘filled with lust/and every female is wrong/but I’m gonna find me some love to touch’.

This song is swiftly followed by the strongest track on the album – Sister Pharmaceutical which is loaded with crashing guitars and ‘Red Indian tom-tom’ style drumming with Johnny Bennett singing a tale of dependency in his best John Foggerty mode.

Johnny then slows things down for a few tunes which is a shame. Done with it and Why are you so happy? are both okay; just not very memorable? Sailboat is actually a ‘stand out track’ as he uses the Sailboat as a metaphor for the lady in his life who is ‘just off the shore/so overjoyed/chasing the wind/and drowning a boy’ which he sings over some sublime pedal-steel guitar and finger plucked double-bass.

The album soon rocks again with the now obligatory ‘political’ song World on Fire which races along in Bob Segar fashion and even manages to reference Jimi Hendrix’s Fire; which isn’t actually a bad comparison.

Two more unhurried songs follow; One night bag and Lights in the drive; then THE VIOLET HUSH ends with a real oddity. You will begin strays into Michael Buble territory with a ‘Swing’ flavoured love story but only made me feel like it had been shoe-horned onto the end to make up the numbers.

All in all this is a fine album with very little to criticise apart from the blandness of some of the quieter songs and ‘that’ song at the end.

AH – MAVERICK MAGAZINE