Forming a rock ‘n’ roll band is one of the more deceptive and fickle actions a group of young men (and it’s almost always young men) can take. It seems so easy: get a self-confident frontman, grind our some satisfying guitar parts that allow just as much time for posing as for riffola, get sweaty – then lie back and watch as the groupies roll in.
So easy, so tempting. Except: unless your frontman is really good, and really knows how to engage a room full of arched eyebrows, you fail. Unless the ‘Us Versus The World’ schtick comes across as genuine, you fail. And if those boogie-woogie riffs that have worked for so many bands for so long aren’t just so, you won’t so much fail as be laughed out of town.
Hence the arrival of a rock band that get it right is always to be appreciated. Enter Sissy And The Blisters, who tick rock ‘n’ roll boxes whilst lightly skipping around those labelled ‘Massive Cliché Nonsense’.
Just listen, and look and admire: Sissy And The Blisters’ togetherness is real, not forced, their crashing guitar and clunky drums have grown out of an organic process and their songs are tread old paths, but the band are wearing new shoes.
Sissy and The Blisters – Things May Change
In Things May Change, gloom and misdemeanour wallow, hand in hand. Masculine pride and assuredness compete with discomfort and crumbling confidence.
The guitars wax, wane and rattle. The song follows a verse-chorus-verse format, just like it should. Sissy And The Blisters are rock ‘n’ roll like it ought to be: blunt thrills performed on the cheap, eyes greedily spying the future. And they only formed in December, too.