Album Review: Fizzy Blood - 'Pan Am Blues'
Leeds quintet Fizzy Blood just released their thirteen track debut album, ‘Pan Am Blues’ is their reflective and experimental, contradiction-ridden debut with a dark, almost sinister aftertaste.
‘Pan Am Blues’ is nothing like the art rock outfit released before, while at the same time being familiar and unfazed. With the thirteen expressional tracks on this debut, they shine a light on all different aspects of their self-defined sonic rock sound. Their first two, ‘Centre of Nowhere’ and ‘Complementary’, are the start of this journey, talking about responsibility and how not all is what it seems. Both bounce and tumble, dance and waver across the airwaves. A favourite on the album is undeniably catchy song number five ‘Flavour Of The Month’, on which we hear the influences of indie and disco rock. The track follows the first four songs on the album, all sounding like a journey of their own; charming yet without an easy-to-recognise, easy-to-dance-along-to structure, experimental.
Honesty is the backbone and driving force of all of their songs, and that might just be what makes Fizzy Blood a successful band. Their influences span across all genres and have changed massively from when they first started releasing music. Their experience in creating these pockets of intriguing stories make ‘Pan Am Blues’ sound determined and like a controlled chaos. With ‘10-23’ being a perfect example of that controlled chaos; it is a fuzzy, catchy, warm and riffing alt rock track with some raunchy instrumental solos.
The sultry, crooning vocals of vocalist and guitarist Benji Inkley shine brightest on the early Arctic Monkeys-like ‘Famous Planes (feat. L E M F R E C K)’, and are so well supported by Paul Howells (guitars and keys), Tim Malkin (guitars and keys), Ciaran Scanlon (bass) and Jake Greenway (drums). They are a well-oiled machine, despite having been torn by uncertainty and at times even thinking of giving up the band all-together. This debut album stands at the end of a very rough and rocky road, Howells said: “We were in each other’s back pockets for six years, really burnt out and at times it felt like an uphill battle. The process of picking up from that and then trying to start again was quite difficult, but I’m glad we’re where we’ve ended up. I wouldn’t change it.”
‘When It All Falls Apart’ seems to mention that, yet sounds almost most uplifting out of all thirteen songs on the album. In that sense, to me, the order of these songs seems to have been chosen at random, but with a calculated and well-produced band such as Fizzy Blood, random can’t potentially be in their musical dictionary. On ‘Pan Am Blues’ we hear soul, pop, punk and grunge to name a few, so they succeeded at stretching their legs musically and creating something non-boring! “The whole reason we made this record is that we were getting so bored of writing songs to the rock formula. So, after years of doing the same thing, this was a way of stretching our legs out a little and saying look at all the things we can do. This is nothing like we thought our debut album would sound like, but it’s the best thing we’ve ever created.”
Words by Laura Rosierse
