Savoy Motel – How We Made The Most Era-Defying Album Of 2016

Last month, Nashville group Savoy Motel released their funked up self-titled debut album. In it, the quartet dabble with indie-rock on ‘Souvenir Rock Shop’, frantic Talking Heads-esque rhythms on ‘Hot One’, as well as incorporating a prog-rock freakout on ‘International Language’. Basically, it sounds like it could have been made anytime in the last 50 years – and it’s seriously good.

https://soundcloud.com/krazypunx/savoy-motel-souvenir-shop-rock

As the group head to these shores for their first bunch of UK shows, the group share the key records that helped influence their timeless new record.

Little Richard – ‘Little Richard’ (1958)

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Dillon Watson (lead guitar): “I often sit in wonder that a force as fabulous as Little Richard can share the same astral plane as us mere humans, and from the opening blast on ‘Keep a Knockin’ to the cool vamp of ‘Lucille’, he is at his most divine on this disc. Recorded in New Orleans with Earl Palmer, who would go on to lead the sessions for Jim Sullivan’s UFO behind the drums, rock and roll does not get any hotter.”

Royal Trux – ‘Royal Trux’ (1988)

Jeffrey Novak (lead vocals, bass): “This very underrated self-produced debut album from Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty laid the blueprint for everything that followed in Royal Trux’s expansive discography, with a massive amount of miscellaneous percussion, tasty guitar licks, and cryptic lyrics, creating a sound not too far off from Faust’s mysterious 1971 debut. This album was the soundtrack to the summer I turned 18, when I was working my first job at a construction site. Every break I got, I’d go to my car to listen to this or ‘Twin Infinitives’.”

Black Lips – ‘We Did Not Know the Forest Spirit Made the Flowers Grow’ (2004)

Jeffrey Novak: “This album was the soundtrack of the summer I turned 19. From 2003-2006, the Black Lips were untouchable, easily the best American Rock’n’Roll band going at that time, and this album proves it more than anything else they did before or after. I remember thinking at the time that the Black Lips were the complete antithesis of The Strokes in style and stage presence.”

Pavement – ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ (1992)

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Mimi Galbierz (lead vocals, guitar): “My friend Adams first played me this record when I was about 15. I had never heard any music like Pavement before; only high school jock jam mixes and Limp Bizkit. Stephen Malkmus’ lyrics swirled me away into lands of summer love and far away spies. Two States straight into Perfume-V will always be the soundtrack to my young mind. Truly a record I was inspired by.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5OeoVkTDLM

Hot Chocolate – ‘Cicero Park’ (1974)

Jessica McFarland (vocals, drums): ”You’re a natural high, and I’m stoned to the Bone.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr8QxW6G4ik

Tonight, the group play an in-store gig at London’s Rough Trade East (Nov 17)

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