Heavy Souls

The Heavy Souls duo have never left me feeling anything other than fulfilment at their suave-sounding, garage rock musical offerings. Their live performances are frankly hypnotic, and in accord, their recordings possess a rare quality that is equally as entrancing. That said, when I was gifted with the opportunity to review their latest EP, What Can’t You See?, I leapt at the opportunity, whilst simultaneously closing all the curtains, locking the doors and switching off my phone – no distractions would dare to tear me away from the group’s imminent sweet sounds.

Upon first listen, the EP delivered a fruity unification of quality instrumental prowess and vocal expectancies. However, after subsequent listens – and believe me, there were plenty – I began to feel the depth of adoration poured into each of the six colourful tunes. The twosome patently do nothing by halves, and that is demonstrated by the obvious time and aspiration that has been stuffed into every last crevice of What Can’t You See?.

Although nearly every EP is doomed to have at least one space-filler track, the group’s latest release possess no such convention, with each song donating a diverse variation of the band’s joint abilities. Personal favourites are Addiction, a track that twists and echoes the urbane noises of The Black Keys, and Haunted, a tempo-bounding delicacy that leads you in every possible direction. But don’t get me wrong, I could adoringly gush about the remaining four tracks also.

To conclude, the EP provides a clarity that leaves you forcefully hammering down on the repeat button until your fingers are nothing but bloody little stumps. It would be so terribly easy to sit here and praise What Can’t You See? to the end of the earth and back again, but the only real way that you’ll truly comprehend my words is by having a cheeky listen yourself - and trust me, your ears will thank me.

What Can’t You See? is set for release on Amazon and iTunes on 22nd February. Have a peruse on their Facebook page for more information.

Written by Keira Trethowan

FEB. 19 2016 - Cornwall Music Seen

Eighteen months ago, power duo Heavy Souls unleashed a raw, sprawling debut album that established their credentials as fat free, no-frills blues rock exponents of some merit. A testament to their creative fecundity, the sixteen track set crackled with enthusiasm and ideas. A year and a half down the line, those ideas have had time to mutate under the lambent glow of Guy Harandon (Guitar/Vocals) and Phillip Dolbear (Drums/Voodoo)’s dustbowl radiation.

A half dozen screaming mandrakes have taken root; the disc’s eponymous opener roars in like a barroom brawl between Blue Cheer and the Seeds, this kinesis producing a powerhouse garage rocker that snakes across the space between speaker and ear. Dark light flashes of dirty rock’n’roll are further illuminated by Guy’s eyeball-rotating vocal as the track slithers toward its climatic boiling lava instrumental break. ‘Addiction’ is equally serpentine, insinuating itself into the consciousness and creating a sense of encroaching claustrophobia by compressing space and time through a series of assured tempo changes. Any sense of restraint is abandoned as the track’s sonic attack lead break detonates ahead of the home straight.

By contrast, ‘Three Dog Night’ is an exercise in subtle shading. Supported on a propulsive bed of rhythmic mortar charges, the number uncoils as a loose-limbed boogeyman boogie that reaches periodic peaks of pulsar grade mass and impetus. Standout track ‘Haunted’ begins at the church of Dr Phibes, the organ giving way to a reflective groove, before the gas hits the flame and globs of white striped ectoplasm are ejected by the ghost in the drum/guitar machine.

Less of a blues, more of a sultry bump’n’grind, ‘Tuesday Blues’ is a voodoo rhythm shakedown that thunders, skitters, rocks and rolls its way toward a towering climax. Billed as a bonus cut, ‘Fun Loving Girl’ stands proud on its own merit. A sawdust floor twister that kicks up a dust storm of savage desire, the track pays testament to Phil’s witchcraft rhythms. The dust settles on our sweaty bodies…

Engorged by such sex beats, trakMARX cornered Phil and Guy at the crossroads to find out more:

For the uninitiated, tell us about the Secret Origin of Heavy Souls…

Phil: Like most modern romances we met online. We were both looking to start an original project but our influences and what we’re into are a bit odd for our age range. It’s tough to find a bunch of relatively young people that are into old school rhythm and blues. Went for a pint, had a jam, and recorded 26 tracks about a month and a half later. It was all weirdly easy.

That first album was something of an epic, how do you perceive it now?

Phil: We recorded the whole thing in two and a half days. It was a great experience but didn’t really reflect our sound at the time. Guy was playing through a monster bass cab called ‘Bertha’ and my kit was a lot more complicated than it is now. There was monstrous bottom end but it just didn’t come through on the recording. We were both still finding our sound. That’s something we’ve both worked really hard on. Listening back to it now it doesn’t really sound like us. We’ve moved on. Guy’s vocals have changed tremendously.

Have you kept much of that material in the set?

Phil: Our set is pretty much a lottery every time. We try to play the new stuff and the odd older song like ‘Tea’ or ‘No.7’, but often jam out something new on the spot or play something only one of us knows. It keeps us both on our toes. We do have printed set lists – but we don’t read them. Fun Loving Girl is kind of a staple though. It’s a good warm up.

How do you feel you’re developing in terms of the live show?

Phil: Anything can happen on the night really. We don’t think through what we’re going to do: who takes a solo and when etc. It just sort of happens.

Do you feel that the gigs have contributed to the development from the album to the new EP, or has that primarily been achieved through rehearsals?

Phil: We gigged tons last year though so we’re really comfortable live. It’s the whole point really. We only record what we can do live. Not big fans of overproduced stuff.

Guy: Especially with vocals. Live I would say; practicing live – trial-by-fire style.

How did the recording process for the EP play out?

Guy: Literally, we turned up at John Cornfields place, set up and started playing. Everything on the EP as you hear it was recorded live in one day. It was awesome, John’s a legend, although we got lost trying to find his place.

Phil: John was able to do everything we wanted with almost zero prompting. Nice and raw. No effects or overdubs. Just a quality live recording.

The new EP seems to have more garage influences, was this a conscious thing?

Phil: I was just having fun hitting stuff, though the new EP is much more reflective of the pace we play at live. We tend to go flat out a lot of the time. Sometimes it gets hazardous.

Guy: I don’t know if it was a conscious thing or not. With me, when it comes to writing I have no genre in mind, it just flows – as arrogant as that sounds.

Heavy Souls on Facebook

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Dick Porter - March 3rd, 2016 - Trakmarx

SOME of the best music at Looe Festival was away from the main stages. Heavy Souls played all three nights at the Ship Inn to audiences who couldn't get enough of their garage rock and heavy blues. Phil Dolbear's monstrous drumming underpins the wild, fluid guitar and vocal of Guy Harandon. This duo is one of those bands you have to see live to appreciate and Heavy Souls are playing next at Mono in Falmouth on Saturday, together with Falmouth's Massage Parlour and El Toreador.

Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Heavy-hits-Looe-come-Mono/story-27852932-detail/story.html#ixzz3qkzVY1Wq
Follow us: @westbriton on Twitter | westbriton on Facebook - Western Morning News

Although they’ve been kicking up dust clouds for less than a year, St Austell power duo Heavy Souls have already managed to spread their superdense blues particles an impressive distance into the stratosphere. Comprised of Phil Dolbear (drums, percsussion) and Guy Harandon (guitar, vocals), they subscribe to the unpretentious approach to playing and recording that (often by necessity) typified many of their primal blues influences.

Recorded shortly after their collaboration took wing, ‘Until You’re Mine’ provides evidence of the way in which this no-frills approach has already borne alluring fruit. “It was all pretty rapid. Most of it is good old garage blues stuff about relationships and drinking.” explains Phil. “For the album we wanted an unproduced and raw sound so we recorded everything live. Most of it was done on the first take … some of it wasn’t. We just wanted an album that we could play live without loads of faff and effects. No clever autotune or overdubbing drum waffle.”

The resultant fourteen track album (which also includes an additional two acoustic bonus renderings of ‘Old No. 7’ and ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’) is something of a blues bonanza. After being bumped and ground onto the Devil’s highway by throbbing opener ‘Fun Loving Girl’, the disc gathers impetus through ‘Can’t Get Enough’, a lusty funk-infused blues adorned by Guy’s understated vocal. However, despite their adherence to the blues gospel, there is more than adequate diversity here: ‘Fifteen Minutes’ detonates as a jagged shard of coruscating garage rock that marries heavy psych elements to the sixties punk template to create a track that recalls the Small Faces at their heaviest.

Dolbear’s rhythm riot propels ‘Your Love’ through the gate kicked open by Sandy Nelson almost five decades ago, as a dizzying miasma of whirling psych rams the track into the subsequent ‘Backstabber’ – a minimum R’n’B, beat-driven recountment of the kind of betrayal many of us can empathise with, propelled onward by rhythms that ultimately reduce to a sub-sonic pulse. ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’, the duo’s interpretation of rural pioneer Hambone Willie Newbern’s 1929 cut, ‘Roll and Tumble Blues’, emerges as a mighty slide infused rendition that enables Harandon to unleash his holler to fine effect.

The choppy, energized barroom romp of ‘Old No.7’ and the sparsely tactile ‘Delicious’ provide further indication of the variety of texture Heavy Souls are capable of weaving, while the understated ‘Evil (Is Going On)’ adds agreeable intricacies to the rolling boxcar template. ‘Original Sin’ sees jams kicked out amid Vincebus eruptions as the album develops a more visceral edge that takes dirty, urgent garage and dares it to play chicken in the crosstown traffic. Similarly thermaturge, ‘Got Nothing To Lose’ is a boiling broth of desire that expands into a hot pool of womanneed thanks to a nicely barbed selection of hooks.

‘Tea With Sugar’ provides the album’s vertex – a surefire banger that employs deceptive, effective simplicity to define a riotous, primal R’n’B throwdown that directs its power with pinpoint accuracy. After an affectionately rendered version of the Lightnin’ Hopkins classic ‘Shotgun Blues’, ‘Sweet To Sour’, brings the album home emphatically with an authentic dustbowl rumble, artfully embellished with slide and harp. Much like the band themselves ‘Until You’re Mine’ doesn’t make a fuss – it simply shows up, plugs in and detonates. But then, there is little that Heavy Souls need to say – the album does that for them. - Trakmarx

Battle-hardened Heavy Souls play Falmouth gig
By Cornish Guardian | Posted: February 11, 2015

HEAVY SOULS took the £500 first prize in the final of the 2015 Battle of the Bands at Sailors Newquay last Friday.

The two-piece – Guy Harandon (vocals, guitar) and Phil Dolbear (drums) – have an original garage sound which combines the driving, upbeat rhythms of bands such as The Kinks with an attack reminiscent of The Black Keys.

Heavy Souls are a band to look out for in the burgeoning garage scene, and will be playing alongside Falmouth's Massage Parlour and Tinnedfruit at Finn McCouls, Falmouth, on Monday from 8pm. See www.facebook.com/HeavySoulsBand - West Briton