Rating: NNN
Elvis Presley is long gone, but the ramblin’ rock he helped popularize is alive and kicking. Alistair Christl is the latest guitar slinger to tackle old-school, Chet Atkins-approved rockabilly, and for the most part he succeeds in channelling the fast-fingered songwriters of old.
There are plenty of standouts here – the disc opener and title track is a blazing, distortion-filled rock song, while Love Don’t Add Up is sweet, lush and Randy Travis-like. His originals could one day be Canadian staples, but by covering Chuck Berry’s Maybelline and Hank Williams’s Ramblin Man, he shows he’s not afraid to pay homage to the past.