The true power of music is impossible to define and yet we can all feel it when the sonic planets align. The magical impact of the finest rock'n'roll - that hazy but overwhelming blend of inspiration and perspiration - sustains us through dark times and fills our hearts with joy and strength. Music unites us, nourishes us and provides us with an emotional clarity that the rest of our turbulent lives singularly fails to offer. For those reasons and many more, we must proudly acknowledge and salute the true architects of the musical world that we call home. Above all else, Ritchie Blackmore is one of rock's greatest architects; a six-string seer that laid robust foundations upon which four decades of thunderous, perpetual evolution have taken place.
Having documented the British psychedelic scene with anthologies devoted to the years 1967, 1968 and 1969, Grapefruit's ongoing series fearlessly confronts the dawn of the Seventies with a slight rebrand. New Moon's In The Sky: The British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1970 features (appropriately enough) seventy tracks from the first year of the new decade as the British pop scene adjusted to life without The Beatles. The 3-CD set concentrates on the more song-based recordings to emanate from British studios during 1970, whether from a pure-pop-for-then-people perspective or the more concise, melodic end of the burgeoning progressive rock spectrum.
The place to begin discussing “The Devil’s In The Detail” is, oddly perhaps, right at the end. Because the last minute and nine seconds of this is a hidden song called “Ode To Idiots” in which Ryan Hamilton takes internet trolls to task on the snottiest country punk this side of Jason and the Scorchers. He ends it with the gleeful line: “I know you live with your mum and I’ll be seeing her again…” and in so doing shows why he just might be the best writer of pop rock songs with incredible hooks that we have right now. He showed this on “Hell Of A Day” his solo record from a couple of years ago, and now in his new band with The Traitors, he underlines it, dots the I’s crosses the T’s and delivers something approaching a classic.