Dead Shed Jokers - Peyote Smile Album

Hear The Track Here

'The average man spends just under a year of his life in his shed' says an informative source of trivia. However, no other nation loves their shed like the English love theirs. Shed in this case meaning a small wooden building, generally situated in the garden (or whatever passes for one) and can look like this (ie English) or even that (everyone else) For the English musician though, as small and dismal as some of these sheds can be, they are tremendous places for creating a studio on the cheap. Long term readers will remember me waxing lyrical about the joys of The Shed a few years back, that's the Irish band btw, not the actual wooden thing they worked out of. Now along come The Dead Shed Jokers and if the cover of this is anything to go by, they made it in the absolute grungiest shed they could find. Surely, though, that's the point of it? Down and dirty...?

(waggles hand) wellllll, kinda/sorta...

These shedded jokers happen to come Wales, a land which grows a great many good musicians. First to spring to my mind is Steff Adams (of which more later) closely followed by Maddie Jones; both of them breath-takingly (Ed: that's not a word!) good in their different ways so I'm getting a bit partial to the Welsh... If'n ya don't believe me and you like a nice slab of steaming hot rock dumped in your lap, then grab a listen to Dead Shed Jokers. Garage bands? Pffffttt. Shed rock mate!! ******* A!! I remember reading somewhere that the blurb promised 'a pure headbangers delight' from this band and - for once - they live up to the hype; down, dirty rock so in-your-face it's pressing against the back of your skull. Peyote Smile is a thirteen track album that pretty much covers all the rock bases so it should appeal to anyone with even the vaguest interest in the genre. Rock as it should be.

After continued exposure, when the cracks usually appear, I'm still liking what I heard and yeah, doing a bit of head nodding because - whatever else - these boys know their roots and are busily regenerating them in some magic rock tracks. As I said, they cover a lot of ground so you are bound to stumble across the odd nod to the greats, and that - to me - is what makes what the Jokers do something special. Each track has something to offer, a different approach significantly aided by the production qualities that spell less is more. Kinda hard then to pick a favourite and here I sit many plays later wondering if I even had a favourite track. Sure, some of them stuck out - Magic Teatime, Jericho, Too Quick For Comfort and the sheer **** you of Tabloid Hangover - but truthfully there isn't a bad track here. If anyone out there is wondering where the spirit of rock and roll is, you definitely need to listen to Tabloid Hangover.

MUST HAVE and Classic Rock gone mental.