Waiting For Helen - Kiss Off

Hear The Track Here

POPspace has been up and down the past few days so its proving almost impossible for me to get download links but hey, you can figure it out instead. The above link will at least get you to the site, and I hope that the site gtes its problems ironed out soon. Waiting For Helen are a five peice band from New Jersey (Ed: hey what exit?) comprising Jerry DeCarlo, Helen Harak, Tony Mazza, Pete Salomone and Joe Van Winkle. Both previous tracks - Good Good Woman (January 2008) and Feed The Fire (May 2008) got a top rating from me because they were both absolutely scorching rock tunes; albeit blues and pop respectively. My theory is that a band who can deliver quality like this, sooner or later is going to give me a Must Have track.

and that is why I waited for this one to move up the list...

Anyone who has read any of my reviews will understand that, at heart, I am a die hard rocker. Sure I like other genres, and even work in some of them myself but if I were honest, rock was always my first love. Stands to reason then that when reviewing a rock band I will be considerably biased, but not to the point of foolhardiness. No worries on that score with Waiting For Helen though because the one thing that shines out of all their tracks - and Kiss Off is no exception - is the sheer professionalism and tightness is the band.

Until this point I hadn't heard a Waiting For Helen track that featured vocalist Helen Harak on it, which this track corrects simply and to the point; she's a blues belter. Essentially Kiss Off is yer standard blues riff, you will have heard it a million times, especially if you are familiar with the bar band ethos that permeates American rock music, but more especially those knowing the Tri-State area (NY/NJ/CT) scene on the eastern seaboard. As such then, its fairly obvious that this will not appeal to everyone, like a lot of their tracks it has a raw quality to it that endears it to addicts like me but would probably not make any inroads with someone who thought this kind of music was 'old and dead'. Yeah, weellll, not while Waiting For Helen are stomping on the rock corpse it ain't.

Recommended bar room blues.