2/6/14 Telegram.com

[stephb]

http://www.telegram.com/article/2014020 ... /-1/NEWS06

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Sick Puppies headline Feb. 26 show at Palladium

By Alan Sculley CORRESPONDENT

The Sick Puppies got a major commercial breakthrough with its previous album, "Tri-Polar." For many bands, that creates an unwanted side effect — pressure for a repeat performance with the next album.

For Sick Puppies, the popularity "Tri-Polar" created a different feeling.

"When you have the success you have, the biggest thing that comes with it is self-esteem," singer/guitarist Shimon Moore said in a recent phone interview. "You feel a little more like you're capable of doing it, like you're a lot more relaxed in the process. We're not going to try to be anything we're not. We're just going to sound like us and let the songs do the work. There's a freedom in that. It makes it sound more like us because we relaxed."

The result is an album that captures more of what Moore hears in his band.

"I think we found our sound more with this record than any other record, "Moore said.

What the band didn't want to do with "Connection," though, was make the same album as "Tri-Polar."

"It would be easy to just think if we did the same thing we did before, then everything would be peachy," Moore said. "Everything would be good, because it's worked before. And we didn't want to do that because we wanted to try to push ourselves musically as far as we could go."

"Connect" does, in fact, introduce some fresh wrinkles in the Sick Puppies sound.

"Tri-Polar" was a particularly intense (if also melodic) hard rock album, but "Connect" eases up a bit on the tension that inhabited many of the "Tri-Polar" songs, creating more breathing room in the performances on the new album. The melodic strength of the previous album, though, carries through to "Connect," as rockers like "Walking Away," "Die To Save You" and "The Trick The Devil Did" balance taut energy with pleasing vocal hooks and melodic guitar riffs and leads.

The group stretches out with a more textured sound on songs like "There's No Going Back" (a radio-ready pop rocker complete with the fashionable "woah-woah, woah woah, woah-woah" vocal hook and shout-along refrain), the airy psychedelic pop of "Telling Lies" and especially "Under A Very Black Sky," an epic track that tips its hat to late-period Beatles and Queen's stacked vocals.

Moore and bassist/singer Emma Anzai began crafting the still-developing Sick Puppies sound when they formed the original lineup of the band in Australia in 1997 with drummer Chris Mileski.

But after releasing an Australian-only album, "Welcome To The Real World," Moore and Anzai concluded the band could only get so far being based in Australia and decided to move to Los Angeles in March 2005, leaving behind Mileski, who chose not to leave Australia. Drummer Mark Goodwin came on board to replace Mileski shortly after the move.

Ironically, something Moore did before leaving Australia gave the Sick Puppies the break the band needed to get its career going.

Before coming to Los Angeles, Moore had taken some video footage of Juan Mann, who gained some notoriety in Sydney for walking around a local mall with a sign that offered "Free Hugs."

While in Los Angeles, Moore got word that Mann was going through serious depression over the death of his grandmother. Remembering his video footage, Moore decided to create a video greeting card with the Sick Puppies song "All The Same" providing a soundtrack for the footage.

Moore then posted the video on the popular website, YouTube, and within days, it had gotten more than 250,000 hits.

The attention the "Free Hugs" video was getting prompted Los Angeles radio station KROQ to start playing "All The Same," and in short order record labels started courting the Sick Puppies. Virgin (since absorbed by Capitol Records) ended up signing the group.

"All The Same" was included on the band's 2007 CD, "Dressed Up As Life," and while the album wasn't a big hit, the single, combined with extensive touring got the Sick Puppies established on the hard rock scene.

For awhile, the band worried it would forever be known as the "Free Hugs" band. But Moore said that changed with "Tri-Polar" producing the crossover hit single, "Maybe," as well as three rock radio hits, "You're Going Down," "Odd One" and "Riptide."

Now the Sick Puppies are back on the road, headlining the "Revolver Hottest Chicks In Hard Rock" tour (a nod to Anzai), which runs into late March and includes a stop at the Palladium in Worcester. The group is giving fans a mix of new and old songs.

"There are about for every two old songs there's one new song," Moore said. "We'll have about 15 songs in there, maybe more."

[Brianna]

Thanks for posting, Steph!!

[Carrie]

I'm sooo looking forward to this show at the Palladium!!!