Megalith Records
For fans of: Ska and reggae with more polish than grit.
Channel One only recently made it on to the Dizzybeat radar thanks to some coverage on Musicaloccupation.com. Hailing from San Antonio, USA they have a new record out on The Toasters’ label, Megalith. I had to scrounge around for some context to the release and the band, and I am glad I bothered, because context is everything, after all. In other reviews, the alt country label gets thrown into the description of their sound, something I’m not sure the band would be too happy about, having made it clear that they’d prefer that no distinct labels be attached to their sound (apart from ska and reggae I guess). However, the polish I would associate with alt country is definitely evident with Channel One, and while a gritty sound is very common in the world of contemporary ska and reggae, such polish is a welcome change.
Pose & Posture is a fairly brief album with ten songs, though it makes sense given the time associated with recording and the need for a band to build recognition with listeners. After a short introduction from Rob “Bucket” Hingley, the upbeat Please makes a great start to the album. I Let My Guard Down is a more conventional sounding ska track, and is my way into this album. It sits well with the track Hum in that it is more what I expect to hear from a ska album. It’s on other tracks such as Let Her Run and Til It’s Too Late (which has an excellent guitar effect through the verse), where I am forced to open my mind.
Favourite track: Over the course of a dozen listens, Jah became my favourite song. It’s a comment on the variety of religions and their relationships, but it is handled in a very clever and paradoxically positive way. It, more than the other songs steeped in personal rhetoric, speaks to me as someone who is generally very cynical.
Overall: This is an album I’ve been happy to have stuck in the CD player. Personally, I would prefer other band members to pick up some more of the vocal harmonies, but instead they tend to have the horns doing the job, which I’m not so keen on. Also, for a band wanting to be taken seriously for their strength of song writing, I’d move away from generic cover art, but that aside, it is a very considered album with the potential for broad interest. The musicianship is excellent and in many respects quite conventionally ska. The very personal lyrical style of Gerald Hooper is quite endearing and while his voice isn’t something you’ll hear regularly in a ska band, it will be a key element in their success.
Available from: http://www.megalithrecords.com
Channel One on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/channe1
