Noo Yoikers THE COMPULSIONS were formed in the summer of 2002 by singer/ guitarist/ songwriter ROB CARLYLE and feature a rotating line-up including legends such Hubert Sumlin (yes, as in Howlin' Wolf) and Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith group. For attracting such star players, he deserves our utmost respect.
Sadly, he doesn't garner similar superlatives for the three tunes making up "Laughter From Below." Sumlin and Daugherty don't appear with the band on these cuts, and while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the swaggering RAWK writ large all over these guttersnipe tunes, they're sadly short on inspiration and anything to separate them from the pack of Stones wannabes who are always lingering in the wings.
Opener "Down On The Tracks" sets the tone. It's loud, gritty, sidewalk-prowlin, trick turnin', bourbon-sluggin' stuff and is more than edgy enough to convince live, but for all its' steamhammer power, muscle and searing slide guitar from Richard Fortus (Guns'n'Roses, Love Spit Love) it's nothing we haven't heard a thousand times before.
"Shake Hands With The Devil" and "Dance Around The Fire" continue - with a grim inevitability - in the same vein. The bar-room swagger on the former is the better, copping moves straight outta the Stones hallowed, early to -mid 70s songbook. It's got more lippy sneering than a dozen Elvis conventions and doesn't really provoke any complaints, but is low on innovation all the same. "Dance Around The Fire", meantime, is the nadir. Sure, it takes a chance of sorts with a rock hard disco beat and finds Carlyle's gutsy vocals cutting to the chase, but the horribly obvious chorus ("Dance, dance, let me take you higher, dance around the fire") won't exactly trouble Seamus Heaney and the whole thing never really rises above cliche. Pity.
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The Compulsions are a drilled, rockin' outfit who would surely make for a good, inhibition-free night of crunching rifferama in a small club atmosphere. On record, though, their songs are simply nothing special. One assumes the title "Laughter From Below" refers - in true rock'n'roll fashion - to the beardy red bloke with the arrow tail. Well, he's certainly not been dispensing any of his better tunes to The Compulsions. That's for sure.
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