The Treat
In Technicolor
Rockular
Dissatisfied with every contemporary trend in rock music (and who can blame them?), The Treat have decided to shut their eyes and ears to the last few decades and pretend they never took place, going so far as to design a circular band logo straight out of the mescaline-laced ’60s to complete the ruse. Likewise, the band’s debut album, In Technicolor, does not simply evoke general comparisons to the gods of classic rock -• it is classic rock, direct and unmitigated.
For this Oxford-based three piece, rock ‘n’ roll was and still is a way of life; the other two components being the oft-mentioned sex and drugs. Listening to rock means waking up just before lunch on a stained mattress on the floor of a seedy apartment next to a blonde (dyed, of course), lighting a cigarette, taking a pull of what looks and smells like bourbon straight from the bottle and wondering just how the hell you got here after that killer show last night. The music on In Technicolor – with all its unabashed homage to Sabbath, AC/DC, Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, et al – celebrates that questionable existence. Meanwhile, Radiohead is finding new ways to criticize the crushing pointlessness of modern life just across town.
What The Treat do, they do very well. The opener, “Burnin’,” is highly charged stuff, geared for the folks in the audience who came to rock. “Agent 555,” the album’s first single, is catchy and anthemic, especially for those looking to score some hard shit from the guy loitering in the gents’ toilet. And so it would be a mistake to dismiss this outfit just because it happens to be so resolutely retro as to be unfashionable, even in these desperate, originality-starved times of ours. If you offer the devil sign (the two middle fingers held down by the thumb, pinkie and pointer extended) without irony when something pleases you, enjoy more than your fair share of air guitar in mom’s full-length mirror, drive around in a beat-up auto while yelling flirtatious obscenities at girls out the passenger window and consider Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure the apex of cultural achievement, The Treat will fit your musical bill exactly. The same goes for listeners who tend to deviate from this callous stereotype slightly. Not surprising, angst-ridden fans of Limp Bizkit, Hundred Reasons, Linkin Park and the like won’t find much here. Neither will the dance crowd. But should straightforward rock ‘n’ roll hedonism ever regain its once-lofty status, The Treat might even recruit a few converts from among their ranks.
The Treat: http://www.thetreat.co.uk/
