Listening to The Hot Sprockets, it’s hard to make out where they are from, which in a universal world is great and what you’d want. Instead of sounding like they are from South Dublin, these guys sound like the are from the Deep South of the U.S.A. Over the past few years, avid connoisseurs of the Dublin scene will have no doubt seen the band, as they honed and perfected their sound. The culmination of that work is their debut record ‘Honeyskippin”.
Starting off is the current single Cruisin’, uptempo with a memorable ‘ooh ooh’ refrain and is a great introduction to the album. Recorded in Spain and produced by Boz Boorer, The Hot Sprockets have managed to capture a timeless sound, not entirely crystal clear with a nice vocal effect giving an old microphone feel.
The album is a definite how to in dirty country rock, that’s not saying it formulaic, it’s saying, The Hot Sprockets have taken classic structures, updated and given them the Sprocket treatment. What they’ve ended up with is a damn fine contemporary dirty rock album.
You’ve got the traditional foot stomping tracks, they are not there just for the sake of it though. Everything is structured, broken down, there for a reason. Alongside those ‘Midnight Train’ has a lazy laid back feel. Imagine one horse town and it’s hot. ‘Long Way From Home’ and ‘Cold Winter’ are both acoustic cowboy led tracks. Five tracks in, ‘Chant’, a vocal and handclap track provides an interlude.
The Hot Sprockets have set themselves a tone for the album and have excellently stuck to it. Lyrically throughout, they speak of what many would conceive of a Americana cowboy life. Sleep Shake, ‘sleeping on the porch’ and on Bad Jim ‘take no breaks on the 4th of July’. They continue this theme exceptionally well.
Really enjoyed this album, I just hope that the band are on the right continent.