Review of Six By Seven's CD "Ready For You Now"

Six By Seven: Ready For You Now

This is a right good conventional guitar/keyboards band doing a proper pop song with all the right ingredients and no artificial colouring. But it is old timers Six.By Seven. What?

I don't know how conscious they were of using Bruce Channel's gloriously overplayed and undervalued hit "Hey Baby" as the source of the chorus. But it pretty well makes their single unlistenable for me.

The first notes of that iconic tune have been robbed, but the perfect answering phrase that made Channel's song such a big hit are missing, with only a lovely rolling bass sound to compensate Six.By Seven miss the ambitious target they've set themselves. It deserves to be in the pop charts. Let's hope so, eh?

"She Didn't Say" is much safer stuff. A driving pulse and a shouted vocal with a rasping punk-edged momentum. In the distance there's a repeated organ phrase, and half way in there's a stupid rock guitar lead break. Pretty cool. But the six minutes or so seem like 20.

"Pretty Baby" is even longer. I loose interest. It starts where "She Didn't Stay" finished off, with repetitive fuzzed guitar. The vocal track is sent outside and brought back in through the ventilation ducts. This must be what the true fans like best. Gnurly stoner juddering and Lemmy-style simplicity. The opposite of Bruce Channel, in fact. Are these guys cracking up? Best check the live set at the Cockpit again on Tuesday.

• www.sixbyseven.co.uk

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