Flower Travellin' Band - Anywhere (2007)

It's a dead cert that those who dismiss this Flower debut as a covers album have never heard it, only heard about it. For its grooves contain such monstrous modifications that each track leaves the starting block a full metre lower than the hoary jalopy originals, a Ferrari where once was a Ford. For a start, flower Travellin' Band do not cover the song 'Black Sabbath'. Instead, they let its tyres down and ride it across a ploughed field. They do to it what no British band could ever have done, dissolving the 4/4 rhythm into an ambient metal assault over which Joe sings the lyrics when he feels like it. Flower’s version of ‘21st Century Schizoid Man' ejects all the nasty sax flourishes and prissy jazz snare drums of the original and gets down to the real power-trio business that riff always demanded. In this mood, you even begin to believe they could have taken Yes' proto-metal epic 'Heart of the Sunrise' and turned it into the Troggs' 'Feels Like A Woman'. And if you shudder at the thought of Flower approaching an archaic standard such as 'House of the Rising Sun', open up your mind to receive the proto-'Stairway to Heaven' shock-of-a-lifetime. For flower have taken away those chords and, lo, the arrangement hath been lifted up umpteen cosmic notches. By tile end of it, the 'House...' has been displaced by the 'Land of the Rising Sun' and Joe's sense of loss has us all blarting like babbies. Moreover, sole original 'Louisiana Blues' is nearly sixteen minutes of 1970 Dodge Challenger highway grind.