Album Review: "Oak" by Oak

Oak

Sometimes I get emails.

When I was younger, I used to have a song for when I got an email. It was a short song, very short.

(Please keep in mind that I began emailing in 1992...so I wasn't getting a whole lot of them at that time.)

Recently, I got an email from London. Apparently, there's a stoner/desert rock band in London named Oak.

I frankly couldn't tell you much about them, even now when I'm writing this post. The final strains of their eponymous EP debut Oak is finishing up and ringing in my ears.

But I don't have much else to say about them. So instead I'm going to ask the question, where in the world did the moniker desert rock come from? As a follow up, I'm going to further posit, did we really need another term besides acid rock?

Oh...I need to get one with it? OK!

Oak intrigued me.

Sometimes that happens, but here we are and now I'm writing about their music, so I suppose their email worked.

I picture stoner rock/stoner metal/acid rock as this thing that's a cross pollination of Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath, but it's also important to remember the influence of long time stalwarts, Orange Goblin.

There's a clear influence here from the English legends, at least vocally.

Oak's music is very bouncy. It doesn't have the laid back feel of Jimi or the coal covered grittiness of Orange Goblin.

There's also basically nothing here from Sabbath.

The drums sound amazing. It's one of those really sharp and crisp thwaps every time he hits the snare drum.

Though the guitar and bass is very good, there are a number of times when they drop out letting the songs breathe. This gives the focus to the vocals (thank god a vocalist finally got featured am I right?) and the drummer.

There's an up and down to this EP that feels so natural and awesome.

Release: OUT NOW
Genre: Stoner Rock
Label: DIY
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