release date: Mar. 8, 2004
format: vinyl (FROG 036-1) / cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,42]
producer: The Great Nalna, Jesper Reginal, PowerSolo
label: Crunchy Frog - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 1. "Baby You Ain't Looking Right" - 2. "Kat Nazer (Powersoul)" (4 / 5) - 4. "Juanito" (4 / 5) - 5. "Oak Tree Girl"
2nd studio album by PowerSolo is much better than the debut from 2001. The brothers Petersen (Jesper Reginal and Ulrik, "The Great Nalna"), co-founders of Crunchy Frog and former drummer of Thau, have both helped producing the album, and that really lifts the music to another level. The band members credited here are: Atomic Child (aka Bo Hjort Jeppesen) on guitars, bass, lap steel, and backing vocals, JCBenz (aka Jens Søndergaard) on drums and percussion, and with Kim Kix (Kim Hjort Jeppesen) on lead vocal, guitars and 'dawghouse' bass.
"Kat Nazer", which was included on the debut really sounds much better on this album. The music of PowerSolo is still a blend of all kinds of styles and influences. Compared to the debut, this has less country rock and psychedelic rock elements and is instead pulled in new directions of more melodic indie pop with inspiration from surf rock and Mexican traditional folk. The first half of the album is clearly the best, and it points to an album at 3,5 or even 4 stars. However, the second half tend to reproduce what sounds like mere improvisations and are like silly songs, which probably was a lot of fun recording in the recording studio, but the result is not really brilliant. I think, not only band and record label but also most critics had expected the band to go a lot further with this album. They really deserved (and still do deserve) much more credit than paid, but that's part of the business. The album didn't bring the success, but luckily PowerSolo kept making music.
The track "Juanito" was used in a French commercial for SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) [National French Rail company], and the track "Baby You Ain't Looking Right" found its way to a Ford commercial, AND "Kat Nazer" was used in a Heineken commercial.
