REVIEW: The Solicitors - Blank Check

The Solicitors are the sound of Friday night.  Get out of work, head straight to a smart bar with desirable romantic options.  Dance, drink, and try your luck.  On stage are four sharply dressed guys (maybe they just left work too) laying down an end of the work week soundtrack that is a perfect mix of new wave and power pop.  You aren't sure, but they seem perfectly in tune with what's happening around you: Found love, lost love, laughter and tears.  How the hell to they do that anyway?

Their debut LP, Blank Check, races through ten songs in a little over a half an hour.  With one exception, the tempo is high and adrenaline-charged.  The instruments pull no tricks -- there is a rock-solid and straightforward rhythm section, a guitar driving the hooks and a call-and-response approach with the lead and backing vocals.  The lyrics can have a bite, but no worries -- you are young and it is a  Friday night.  Let some other band carry the load on date night, the work week is over and lust is in the air -- find The Solicitors.

The Solicitors were formed in Melbourne by English songwriter Lee Jones and American guitarist Laf Zucallerello.  James Manning (bass and vocals) and Max Sterling (drums) complete the quartet.  There is a bit of Elvis Costello, The Knack and Joe Jackson here, but the garage rock energy and power pop arrangements bring it all up to date.  These guys are too good to be a pub band, but if you were filming a movie and wanted a top drawer band that could play the part of a pub band, only be really, really good, these guys should be at the casting call.  Of course, that probably is why Popbboomerang Records snapped them up soon after their birth.  Blank Check is available at the Bandcamp site, and you have a few more days to get ready for Friday.


The Solicitors - If You Let Me Hold You from The Solicitors on Vimeo.





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The Solicitors on Facebook
Bandcamp for Blank Check
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Popboomerang Records