By: Justin Kownacki
he band 3rd Colony may or may not actually play bars, but that's the audience they seem to
be courting on their bluesy, funky, sudsy self-titled disc -- heavy on the Blues
Traveler and light on the pretense. There's no shame in being a bar band; they have
the luxury of cutting through the packaging and marketing and hitting the people
where it counts: smack in the middle of dollar domestic night. Good bar bands
cultivate an audience and keep them coming back for more. I suspect that 3rd Colony
may be such a band.
Lead singer Patrick Stacey has the voice (and coif) for a hair metal band, swooping
and diving in a vaguely nasal, theatrical performance that, like the band as a
whole, largely escapes the camp trappings I would have expected them to stumble
into. Instead, 3rd Colony jam and warble through a dozen bread-and-butter rock and
roll tunes without ever really coming across as false. It's enjoyable and
surprisingly soulful, from the energetic "Free from the Chains" to the spacy
"X-Ray". 3rd Colony may not be blazing bold new trails in the North American
soundscape, but they are knocking out some justifiably listenable crowd-pleasers.
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