It’s easy to think we’ve heard it all – to think that every last stone in rock’n’roll has been turned, and turned again. In one sense that’s sort of true. But then… well, then you find Day-Glo pop-rockers with a funk-’n’-soul horn section, a bunch of dudes in pearls and leather jackets doing disco-Van Halen, and a cloaked seven-piece from Australia mixing old-school metal with trippy psych and calling themselves Battlesnake, and suddenly all isn’t quite as it seems. The vocabulary may be familiar, but the combinations, the fusions etc continue to reaffirm rock’s capacity for surprise. Not to mention fresh riffs on old formulas. With such easy, constant access to every musical style imaginable, is it any wonder that the world of new and
