Hands up who when asked where to get a dose of seventies hard rock instantly thinks “Barcelona!” Nobody? Well, me neither folks, but hailing from that beautiful city and founded by the vocal and guitar duo of the Valetta brothers, ’77 (pronounced simply ”seventy seven”) have dedicated their sound to that decade, picking for me a year that meant Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee, Star Wars, and for music in general, the year that despite being the supposed summer of punk was really slap bang in the middle of the era where disco reigned supreme in the UK charts, Abba, Hot Chocolate, and Leo Sayer all easily outselling the Sex Pistols and their seminal ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ LP.
’77, however, concentrate their sound more on the guitar rock that filled live theatres around the world at the time, rather than the throwaway pop that dominated TV shows such as Top of the Pops alongside DJs now on the register, and should you spend your money on ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us’, that is what you get. ‘It’s Alright’ starts the album off with a simple denim clad stomp with a chant along refrain that owes more that a little to the well worn structure of AC/DC’s blues rock, a simple 3 minute number that leads into a dozen single length friendly rockers that make up the album. ‘Tonight’ follows in the same vein with a bass line that could have swaggered out of the Fender of Cliff Williams himself whilst LG Valetta gets his Angus on in the jangly solo. Gang vocals abound in ‘Come and Join Us’ to get and audience pumped up whilst some of the whimsy of early Slade comes to the fore in ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, all built around the Bon Scott-light vocals of Armand Valetta.
Track after track in the album just screams of ’77’s obvious influences, AC/DC being the most prevalent time and again, a little bit of ZZ Top boogie thrown into the mix in tracks like ‘Too Young To Go’, all before ‘We Want Rock And Roll’ closes the album by starting with a drum riff straight from Led Zep’s ‘Rock and Roll’ before softening into the sort of stamping ode to music that Noddy Holder and Jim Lea could have written in their sleep before handing over to Dave Hill to add some guitar glam to back in the day, all wrapped up tightly in a sub three minute package that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Partly, it is that safety and cosy familiarity that makes ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us’ (any other Slade fans out their immediately recognise the trademark misspellings?) little more than a throwaway number, rather than one that leaves me wanting more. Were this playing on a jukebox in a bar, I would not object, and were a live band cranking out these tunes in the pub, I’d happily buy a pint and settle down to nod along, and then go home and play the original acts that ’77 owe so much to rather than their own album. ’77 is a band that I have no doubt would no trouble in finding a willing and enthusiastic audience at the likes of HRH AOR and similar festivals, rather that the darker recesses of music that is the stock in trade of Ave Noctum.
(5/10 Spenny)
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