Flash Lightnin’: Flash Lightnin’

Flash Lightnin’: Flash Lightnin’
The sticker on the front cover of Flash Lightnin‘s self titled debut album is not only informative but it is also adoration inducing. The first line of the sticker says “The long awaited debut album from Toronto trio Flash Lightnin'”; that is pretty informative. The information continues with the second line which says “Produced by Metric‘s Jimmy Shaw”. But the third line is where it gets adoration inducing. It reads “10 songs, 31 minutes, no ballads, straight up rock and roll”. Reading that I immediate got excited thinking I was in store for some AC/DC, Andrew WK type music. Unfortunately that is not exactly what I was in store for.
Flash Lightnin’s sound is not what I would call hard rock; instead it has a bit of a dirty rock thing going on that sounds like Black Crowes featuring the lead-singer of Portugal. the Man. That is not necessarily a band thing but the sticker made me yearn for some crunchy, blistering rock.
The song that stands out most to me is “You Got A Mouth”. The track is one of the album’s singles but it exemplifies both what I like and dislike about the album. What I do not like about the song is that its kind of a mid-tempo rock song, not at all what I thought was advertised on the album’s cover. But the song is fairly catchy. The main guitar riff in the song reminds me of Say Anything‘s “Spidersong” and the hook is catchy but not extremely strong.
The album’s main problem is that it does not have the type of catchy hooks listeners yearn for. The tracks are all fairly well structured but after several listens through still no songs have gotten stuck in my head.
While I do not know the band’s history thoroughly, the helpful sticker says this is the long await debut album. Despite the long wait, I think the band needs a little more work on their hooks and choruses. They obviously have the talent and musical chops but they are just missing a little “je ne sais pas quoi”.
Rating: 5.3/10
MP3: Flash Lightnin’ “You Got A Mouth”
Buy: iTunes