Drift Session

The MUSIC page of Drift Session’s website offers up a bevy of tracks with names like “Convex Blues”, “Black Candles”, “Dog Leg” and “On Holliday”. On Holliday? Is this quartet of funkers from Canada? Perhaps England or Whales? Don’t think so. Very few U.K. natives actually hang their hats in Lowell Massachusetts.

But it is just this kind intentional persona building exemplified by a group of New Englanders using a term like “On Holiday” which seems to be standard operating procedure for a band like of Drift Session. The band describes itself thus:

Drift Session's sound is a combination of the 60's and 70's era of classic rock, blues, disco, and island sounds, fused together with a modern tone. Our blend of sounds and tunes make for a rhythmic groove on an winding path. Basically, we’ll shred, swing, and drift through the night.

It’s beautiful dream, I will admit. I read this description, then close my eyes and imagine an updated Wild Cherry or perhaps Blind Faith with a harder edge. Maybe I am just too hopeful in my imaginings. Alas, clicking on the above mentioned track yields not much more than the tried and true, wak-a-tik-a guitar rhythm which is the stock and trade of every axe man who has learned how to play bar chords and is saving up for a Wahwah pedal—can’t you just see the jar on some bookshelf in Lowell being filled with loose change and Rock n’ Roll fantasies?

“Convex Blues” is very much the same, but when the vocal kicks in, I am put in mind of a more forced and wearier Groove Child, a New Hampshire band that achieved some local acclaim when I was in high school…twelve years ago. It was that crazy couple of years in the mid nineties when my contemporaries had discovered Mom’s beads and Dad’s granny glasses and hippy nostalgia became more prominent than the original wave of actual hippy culture ever had been. I guess we can blame bands like Groove Child and others in that vein for stealing those couple of years from America’s youth. Perhaps not Phish, but Phish culture and Phish nation.

We can absolutely blame this stable of jam band retreads for handing down a stock-pile of influence to current ensembles like Drift Session. I am not saying that this is a completely worthless band, and if you enjoy recordings in witch the snare drum is right at the front of the mix, than these Mp3s are for you. But one might hope that this group would take some time out and learn to speak with it’s own voice before resurrecting the wak-a-tik-a another time.



Rating: 3.9
To see for yourself go to http://www.driftsessionband.com/