Forming a band with friends can be the best thing for a musical career. Look at The Beatles, joining together at the young age of fifteen as mere schoolboys with the desire to simply channel their inner rockstars and create something magical. However, forming a band with friends can in turn be the worst thing for a musical career. Again, look at The Beatles. I digress The Beatles found massive success together and apart, but for most others, it’s a rocky road when combining the world of business and pleasure. That didn’t deter central Izzie’s Caravan members Izzie and Sim, however, who began their musical career paths as The Deep Impacters with the aid of former member Ray.
URL: https://izziescaravan.com/
The bond forged inevitably ran deep, and even though the band itself didn’t last beyond a couple of albums, Izzie knew he could call on Sim when it came to forming a new iteration destined to only further the musical path he wanted to continue forging under the name Izzie’s Caravan. The duo further enlisted Robbie on the keys and Roque on the bass, giving themselves a layered variety to bring together for a full-length LP which aptly found its title under the name Blow The Lid.
Set for release in the summer of 2021, Blow The Lid is unlike most anything in modern rock that you’ll come across. Instead of chasing popular trends, it hones in on the past more than anything by channeling influences of the band such as early Aerosmith (the theatricality and raw sound, in particular) and Johnny Winter. Certainly, the list of notable sounds cited within Blow The Lid could run five pages deep and still go, but the most respectable piece of having such obvious sounds pulled from the music of the past comes with Izzie’s Caravan succeeding at never stooping to derivative material.
For every guitar lick that could be something from Clapton, there are a dozen unique takes within the same track. While faster entries like “T-Bonecrash” melt faces and ramp up the energy beyond belief, there are plenty of songs that focus on building atmosphere above speed like “Lost,” which exists as a way to break up the borderline overwhelmingly heavier entries spread across the album with a little bit of patience and softer texture. The attention to detail within the album’s pacing is spot-on and it gives Blow The Lid a true sense of professionalism in its track list structure.
There aren’t any particular songs on Blow The Lid that break the mould but — oh, silly me, I’m forgetting the twenty-minute album closer that comes dressed to decimate in the form of “Curse of Anastasia.” Okay, so there’s one song, in particular, that might be responsible for your head bursting on sight when attempting to listen to Blow The Lid in one sitting. Contained within its insane production is a song that is truly flexing everything at its disposal, from gorgeous female vocals used earlier in the album brought back to life here, to impeccable attention to pacing and tonal structure from start to finish.
The song starts in the realm of soft progressive rock before pivoting after its first ten minutes to something more usual from the album that came before, but the “usual” it shifts back to is something still quite good. The talent on display never feels self-serving, instead working as a way to channel the art to listeners above all else. The decision to end the album on such a massively triumphant note as far as compositions go is something most might shy away from, but Izzie’s Caravan isn’t like most and Blow The Lid is distinct evidence of such.
Rachel Townsend