BODINROCKER - Eye to Eye

Rating: RR
Label: Hemifrån/Bearman 2018
Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

'It's time for a vacation - Let's go on holiday'. The opening track is literly everything you could ever wish for from the straightforward Gothenburg rocker Anders Bodin and his clever moniker of Bodinrocker. It's fun! it's catchy! it's boogie! It's one of the best Status Quo-esque songs in ages. What else do you need? Keep it simple! Keep it catchy! Keep it coming? Unfortunately. This is not the standard of the album and to each great track, there's at least two or three dodgy ones.

For instance, "Brown Bear", sounds darn lethal on paper or your screen, but its claws are blunt, shaggy fur, and its roar? Worse than Ted 'Motormouth' Nugent and his awful redneck music of the seventies. Seriously. Poor Teddy recorded merely one great song during the era (Cat Scratch Fever) and Lemmy's version is just sooo much better (Motörhead). Sonically, and this being my second stab at the artist/band, Bodinrocker still riding hard on the boogie woogie era of the late sixties very early seventies. They endeavour to tread the same path and route of the classic acts, but take away the actual route, time, era, and classic.

The band lower the intensity level a notch or three for the barely rocking of "New Sweden", the historical stab at Sweden's second and latest colony in North America. The first? The vikings - the last is yet to come. It certainly boogies and maims its instruments for all its worth. There's a certain innocent charm and swagger to this album, not least considering the solid rhythm section of Stefan Deland (bass) and Klas Anderhell (known as the two from Sven-Ingvars). I'm really fond of tracks such as "Roller Coaster Ride" or the closing track of "Life Ain't Fair", which combines hook and captain. By the way. You may also recognize Bodin from Gothenburgs' Ambulance Service as seen in the reality TV series of '112 På Liv och Död'. Final verdict: DOA. DOA. Tongue-in-cheek. There's still life. We just need to kick-start the heart. bodinrocker.se