Steelism – 615 to Fame (2014)

This is one of the most recent albums I've bought. I bought it at the end of last year. I found it in Fopp, a record store in Soho and the price tag, if I remember correctly, was just 1£. I had listened to this band a bit before. I think it came up in one of the top 100 lists that various record stores publish at the end of year. I remember liking one or two of their songs, so with the price, I felt like it's a good purchase. I still do agree that for the price, this was a good purchase, but I don't know how often I listen to this album to be honest, but now that I'm listening to this, I feel like I should really listen to more of this. The style is instrumental rock with a lack for a better word. In Finnish we call this style of music 'rautalanka' (translates into iron wire). The most famous example of this style of music is the 1960's band The Shadows. It refers to this steely electronic guitar sound.



Most of the music on this album is pretty straightforward rock, but they do put some interesting elements in there. Some parts have influences from Hawaiian steel guitar music, some parts have monotonous rhythms like in Krautrock. Apparently German bands such as Neu! have been strong influences for this band. The sounds are definitely interesting. They are not purists when it comes to rock sounds and the sounds are really what makes this music worth listening to.

The main duo had worked before Steelism in the background band for Caitlin Rose, one of the most notable new country artists that have come out of US in the recent years. You can hear similarities to her music as well. One review I read about this album mentioned Ennio Morricone as an influence. I can totally see that as well. This music could easily be used effectively as soundtrack music for a film.

The flags on the album cover refer to frontmen's backgrounds. Spencer Cullum is originally from Essex here in UK and Jeremy Fetzer is from Ohio. More recently these two flags have caused serious negative feelings in me with Brexit and Trump phenomenas running wild. It's interesting how the flag always gets the bad name so quickly when nationalism raises its ugly head.

The song where this band's Krautrock influences are most apparent is Marfa Lights. There's also an excellent music video of this song. Even the music video shows clear appreciation to 70's German bands. The scientists in the video could be directly from a Kraftwerk video. The video is visually quite amazing. I also think this song is probably the best on on the album.

Even though this band doesn't really bring anything new to the history of pop music, it uses interesting sounds and I can really appreciate the skilful musician work on the album. If you generally like Krautrock and guitar music, I totally recommend this band and this album!

Listen to the album on Spotify.