Amyt Dutta, the guitar player of this long term (for Indian standards) band from Kolkatta is one of the best in this country. Good ballsy playing with a good style. Skinny Alley's live shows have always been good with Amyt generally shining. Their previous album, contrary to how they sound(ed) live, wasn't guitar driven at all. It sounded closer to Cranberries than anything else. Why the fuck did I buy this, you ask? Fair question. Well, I remember liking the song 'Swunk' from one of their live shows that I'd seen a while ago. It was some sexy, heavy rocking, grooving and smartly jazzy stuff. At that point, I wondered why that old album wasn't sounding anything like that. So, a recent random visit to the music store, and I saw this new album of theirs in a nice enough digipack, and to my surprise, the tracklist had 'Swunk' and a few others that went over the regular 3-4 minute range.

The album's main drawback starts showing up right at the beginning of the album. But 'Only human' is a sweet three minute something poppy ditty, so I was still expecting the guitars to kick my ass starting with the next song, 'Swunk'. Too bad it sounds nothing like how it sounded live, the guitars are completely wimped out in the mix and whatever you could hear was totally disappointing trash. It isn't even good enough for a demo level recording.

Frankly, the songs tend to be towards A-OK more often than not. Jayashree might not be Aretha Franklin or Maddy Prior, but she's not a teeny bopper chick either. Though her delivery can get annoyingly nasal at times (see: 'Drag'), she knows how to come up with sweet, quirky vocal melodies and thoroughly understands the concept of harmonizing her vocals. The rhythm section does the job perfectly fine.

It was the guitarist that made this band nifty and that is exactly what makes this album a huge disappointment. 'Recorded loud and lo-fi at The Moony Boom, Kolkatta', says the sleeve notes. Simple translation for you dear readers. Shitty, grating and wimpy guitar tones. Solos, whenever they appear, are hardly memorable and certainly aren't rocking. He does eventually get to play a lenghty solo on song#8, 'Who Are You?', and it ends up being fairly respectable, with the slow build-up consisting of some good blues/rock bends and then with a series of quick jazzy licks by which time the bends and vibrato are completely gone. But hey, the guitar tones still suck.

This CD should carry a bigass disclaimer upfront, to set the expectations right: 'NOT AS SEEN AND HEARD LIVE'.

Label: Counter Culture

Year of Release: 2008