The Jac Dalton Band
“Icarus”
Melodic Rock
FMSG
Doing good business in its Australian homelands, The
Jac Dalton Band is now looking to spread its wings with the re-release of 2010’s
“Icarus” for the UK and European
markets. A move designed to not only act as a vehicle for his own musical
ambitions but to also benefit Dalton’s charity, LandAid (www.landaid.org.au) which was set up to help regional Australian
communities.
Dalton himself is a North Carolina ex pat, and man
can you tell. This second album is brim full of the sort of soft centred
melodic AOR the Americans used to shit on demand giving the album a joyous
groove that demands a long hot drive through the desert.
Some have compared
Dalton’s voice to Coverdale’s early croon but it is nowhere near as soulful or
dextrous. It is not that it is bad, it isn’t and Dalton certainly sings a good
song but Dot he ain’t. Fitting this sort of quaint AOR perfectly, his voice has
a honeyed restraint that mercifully shuns over-egged octave scaling arrogance.
Think Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” with a bit of a vocal overhaul.
On paper, “Icarus” is an easy album to nail and yes
it comes pretty close to the norm of Mr Big and Pride Of Lions but the
Antipodean angle works enough sunburnt magic to give the album a resonance that
sets it apart from the great white herd. It is smooth and well produced but
there is a hot outback shimmer to it that allows the album to neatly side step
the generic.
Apart from the insane Hayseed-lite cover of ‘DC’s “Back In Black” the general quality of “Icarus” is pretty damn good with the grunting “Waterline”, the breezy “Good To Go” and the driven “Suck Bang Blow” being particularly noteworthy. Throw in the killer track “Locked Cocked & Ready To Rock” and you’ll find an album that suspects it is destined to be a long lost gem.
The chances are that if “Icarus” had been issued
thirty years ago it would have proved a staple of US FM radio with the likes of
the effortless “State Of Rock” and “Eye Of The Storm”. Now, it has a fight on its hands with the
Vikings and Teutons shipping this sort of quality high end melodic rock by the
ton, though with a fair wind and some luck there is nothing to say “Icarus”
won’t get heavily rotated somewhere thus hopefully avoiding the ‘much-sought-after-obscurity’
tag.
“Icarus” has that certain something that only Ausie
outfits possess; a sun burnt shimmer that is unique to our colonial friends.
You’ll hear it on any Cold Chisel album but you will be unable to identify what
“it” actually is, yet here it is on “Icarus” in unbridled abundance.
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