Independent
The Lions play the kind of rock ’n’ roll with neatly trimmed nails and a tucked-in shirt. It’s the kind of rock ’n’ roll that has excellent table manners and always manages a pleasant conversation with your mother during tea time. It’s rock ’n’ roll that’s all too respectful of its roots or in other words too familiar and comfortable. Rock ’n’ roll shouldn’t be as safe as it is on the Calgary band’s latest album Live Love Laugh .
You can hear Oasis a little too clearly on “Magic.” “Screaming Gun” sounds like a Stone Temple Pilots B-side. The band doesn’t so much wear its influences a mélange of classic and ’90s radio rock on its sleeves as it does erect giant billboards with flashing neon arrows pointing at the names of their influences. Lyrically the songs deal with the struggles of fame and drug addiction and fall too easily into the rock ’n’ roll cliché and worse come off unconvincing.
The Lions are fine players who clearly possess the musical chops but they don’t have any real sense of identity. Any sense of who The Lions are gets subsumed in the homages and familiar riffs. And because of that The Lion’s rock ’n’ roll is the kind that’s a little too busy being somebody else’s rock and roll.
