Band: Godsticks

CD Title: “Godsticks”

Band Website: www.myspace.com/godsticksmusic

Label: Independent Release

Release Date: 2009

 

Hailing out of South Wales are a new outfit calling themselves Godsticks, who have released their first CD, a five-track EP that displays their rather unique prog slant. The band is a trio of Darren Charles (vocals, guitars, piano), Jason Marsh (bass) and Steve Roberts (drums). For the EP they also employed the drumming skills of Aaron Evans on three of the five tracks. Godsticks formed in 2006 and for the most part played covers of all sorts of progressive rock music. I can’t imagine how tough it must have been trying to land club gigs! Still they decided they had more to offer and started working on their own material.

 

The thing you notice right off with these five tracks is that they’re all quite short; all in the four-minute + range, but the interesting thing about Godsticks’ musical style is that they don’t seem to need long tracks to provide an arena of musical display. They pack lots of musical twists and turns into small packages. But these musical change-ups are not of the dramatic kind, instead these songs, made up of a variety of musical parts effortlessly slide from one feel to the next and while it didn’t seem that the song changed much, on further listens you come to see that you actually went through four or five different bits. The musical style bears a subtle jazzy feel, coming mostly from the fretless bass, but you also notice it in the way the guitar is played from time to time. Vocally I’m reminded slightly of the work of Echolyn, sometimes in vocal tone and other times in the layered arrangements. The only keyboard present is piano but that doesn’t seem to take away from the varied nature of these pieces as Charles goes from acoustic to electric guitars to change the overall tone.

 

This five-track EP is a wonderful tease for the music of Godsticks and I for one am looking forward to a full CD release in the months ahead.