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Cambridge based Sweet Crisis have been on the scene for quite a few years, peddling a classic rock imbued with large dollops of blues and soul. I’d only seen them before on a couple of impressive and well received support slots, so I was keen to catch a headline show for the first time when they were announced at one of my favourite venues, Noel Nevin’s Cavern in suburban Raynes Park, which punches well above its small size when it comes to an ever more impressive roster of acts. Unusually though they went on first, ahead of the support act, at 9pm to allow for keyboardist Rob Bullock taking an early morning flight.
The openers ‘Great Big Steps’ and ‘Black Magic’ summed up their distinctive sound, relaxed and with loads of space between the grooves, and tasteful soloing from guitarist Piers Mortimer. With a keyboard intro from Rob, ‘Love Me Like Sugar’ had a soulful feel, while after a long guitar intro the insidious groove ‘Ain’t Got Soul’ had singer Leo Robarts sounding a little like Maroon 5‘s Adam Levine.
They have an endearingly laid back stage presence, though that might not work so well on the bigger stages. Leo and Piers give each other good guitar and vocal support respectively and with their reddish tousled hair and beards even have a more than superficial physical resemblance.
‘Living Life on The Edge’ was an unexpected but far from self indulgent instrumental where Matt Duduryn’s very cool bass playing made a big contributions alongside the two guitars and both that and ‘Misty Haze’ conjured up the laid back feel of Wishbone Ash’s American exile period of the latter half of the seventies.
While the majority of songs came from their debut album which is a couple of years old now, they did try out a new song Get Fired Up’, which was short and punchy and had a bit of a James Brown or Sly Stone influence of pumped up funk. They are too good to need to rely on covers and yet ‘I’ll Be Creepin’ was absolutely made for them as their sparse, bluesy sound owes more to Free than any other band.
‘Rolling In It’ featured a Joe Taylor drum solo but again kept to a decent length before ‘Treading in Deep Water’, a mixture of vintage southern soul (especially in Rob’s keyboards) and Black Crowes -like sounds grew in pace as it went on. A slightly short set of little over an hour that had flown by ended with the title track of ‘Tricks On My Mind’, short and punchy but with a classic riff pitched somewhere between Free and Lenny Kravitz.
It will be interesting to see where Sweet Crisis go from here, especially as and when a second album is released, and the one new song tonight was a good omen. The blues rock field is ever more crowded but the way they conjure up a distinctly laid back groove can help them stand out from the crowd and this gig only strengthened my already favourable impressions.
Review and Photos by Andy Nathan
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