Kira Mac are a band on a rapid rise. They only started gigging a year ago but a buzz quickly started building, to the extent that this UK tour included what I thought was an ambitious London booking at The Garage. There was a more than decent turnout, approximately half full, and what was just as impressive is that although debut album ‘Chaos Is Calling’ only came out late last year, they have already written several new songs which were performed here.

I was due to see them at Stonedead festival this summer and wondered whether to keep my powder dry for that but the deciding factor was having These Wicked Rivers as support. The Derbyshire-based band have a striking image, looking like an Outlaw gang from the old west in hats, beards and overcoats and with a stage set decorated with vintage lamps and soft furnishings.

Originally I thought they were not my bag but I have warmed in a big way to a sound that is dark and sludgy yet also richly melodic. ‘Shine On’ was a perfect example of this, notably the closing guitar solo from a shape-pulling Arran Day, which had me reaching for comparisons with Raging Slab and to a lesser extent Blackfoot. ‘Force of Nature’ featured a ‘who-oah’ chant and ‘Black Gold’ was a little lighter and more direct, either side of the long, slow ‘When the War is Won’.

John Hartwell is a bit too diffident for my liking in his crowd communication and though the set lost a little direction in the middle for me, the dark riffs and stately pace of ‘Testify’ revived it. The best was left for last though, in ‘Don’t Pray For Me’ (no, not the Little Angels song), building from a slow beginning into an epic with Arran’s closing solo exploding into a rapid conclusion, plus a snatch of Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey My My’.

If many of TRW’s songs take a while for their charms to unfurl, Kira Mac went straight for the jugular with two very direct openers in ‘Hit Me Again’ and ‘Scorned’, the former off the album, the latter a newer song whose chorus ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scored’ I could imagine Lzzy Hale having belted out on Halestorm’s The Strange Case Of..’ album.

If both of those had a slight pop edge a la Hot Damn (and even Shania Twain in parts!), a new song in ‘Farewell’, and ‘Dead Man Walking’, with its deep riff, and the album’s title track, boasting a chorus of ‘take it to the level below’ were significantly heavier.

It is easy to see how the eponymous singer will always be the focal point with her waist length blonde hair, tattoos and leather trousers. Under her real name of Rhiannon Kira Hill, she has a history of both writing and covering country, blues and even Any Winehouse type material in a parallel career.

I didn’t really hear too much of that in a more conventional rock voice, though a couple of songs had a slight southern influence, namely ‘Hell Fire and Holy Water’ and ‘Mississippi Swinging’. What I did notice though, was that she had the vocal power and diction to make her lyrics easily audible even with a heavy backing, something that cannot be said of all bands. She also had a very confident stage presence and was not afraid to break up the music with a thorough introduction of each song.

The set was one straight ahead rocker after another with the likes of ‘Play The Game’, ‘No Way Out’ and ‘Back For More’ managing to be both heavy and commercial at the same time. The songs have a modern feel and guitarists Joe Worrall and Alex Novakovic are both very able but do not linger long with their solos. Together with bassist Bret Barnes I thought they also had a very dynamic stage presence, contrary to feedback I had heard, and the band were very accomplished for one at such an early stage of their career.

My only complaint was that the songs lack a bit of variety and even when Kira introduced a ballad in ‘Never Going To Say’, it wasn’t really anything of the sort.

A set that clocked in at a decent 70 minutes ended with ‘Climbing’, boasting their heaviest and most rapid fire riff yet and ‘Downfall’, one of their many singles to have had rock radio airplay, before a couple of encores. For the first, which I assume was another new song, Kira invited us to sing along to the cheeky chorus of ‘in the morning when you miss me, kiss my a*se and save your whiskey’, then ‘One Way Ticket’ closed the set in the same catchy manner, before I rushed off to get my hands on a copy of the CD.

It seems as if others joined the party first, but my belated first sighting of Kira Mac left a very favourable impression. Yet another addition to what is a thriving home-grown classic rock scene and a band that have already achieved a lot in a short space of time with a big crossover potential to do even better.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)