The full-throttle flight of Rocket Science’s hurtling career came to a shuddering halt in 2004 when frontman Roman Tucker fainted at a party and landed in a ten-day coma. The band had been on the cusp on releasing their third album and had been enjoying burgeoning successes favourably filling festival slots and making significant inroads overseas.
Fortunately Tucker’s recovery was short-lived, though significantly for his band his suffering of post-trauma amnesia involved him having to re-learn large chunks of his whole life, including his musical output. Tucker and the band were placed in the situation where they had to start from scratch. Then, with a new volley of fresh Rocket Science songs ready to fire, their record label pulled out, leaving the band to their own devices to record the album. Different Like You was the result of the band reconvening to their own studio with guitarist Paul Maybury in the producer’s chair. The resulting rawness on the record gets very close to matching the band’s live ferocity.
Tucker’s voice still looms large over the tracks as his live self looms over his organ. The lyrics are sneered as much as sung, as the vocals careen into guttural screams and regularly descend into mad squalls. Maybury naturally has the guitars prominently buzzing and fizzing throughout. The rhythm section is left to hold things together amidst the swirling cacophony of noises variously being cajoled, conjured and created.
The album takes flight in a fiery opening salvo of the urgently chugging Sinful Cowboy, followed by the ‘60s movie drug-scene suitable single Psychic Man. This first single from the album may have signposted a poppier direction, with its glossy sing-a-long chorus and shiny backing voiced “nah-nah nahs”, but even it descents into a whirling musical maelstrom. Rocket Science mix their lyrical imagery and musical influences to create a present where the past and future are frightfully colliding. The middle bracket of songs on the album are indelibly steeped with the ‘60s-sounding swirls of organ and theremin, and are almost impossible to listen to without some sort of physical response.
Different Like You then takes on a sinister ‘when machines go bad’ overtone, as we are dragged into the soundtrack of some sort of future sci-fi horror scenario. The envisaged Rocket Science realm is a harrowing one populated by Jukebox Junkies, where people are reduced to Talking to Machines, before The Clones take over as “the human race has been replaced one by one”. It all sorts itself out soon enough though, and we are snapped back to earth with a closing couplet concerned with real human emotion – a message of love and friendship. Last track Alive in particular has “live favourite” all over. It roars into life after a scintillating organ intro is escorted into the sneering verse by a wailing, incessant guitar riff.The gloss and performance power injected into this album has gone great lengths to capturing the combustible live force of the band. This certainly isn’t an album to passively listen to. The otherworldly sounds, unhinged vocals and colliding musical forces make for a mightily potent album that harangues you to the end. Different Like You...and different from anything else you’ll here this year. A timely and impressive return indeed.
Different Like You is out 26 July through High Spot Records/Fuse Music.
