'The Changes' - Reviewed by Kenny Maclean

Firstly, and as this is my first review for UUC, I feel that I should give myself a short introduction. I’m Kenny, pleased to meet you…Now let us begin.

‘The Changes’ are a self described 4 piece Psychedelic rock and roll outfit from Livingston who have been gigging steadily for the past 6 months. The song in question ‘The Illusion’ is from the bands first double AA side, which is due for release sometime in early 2013. 

The track opens with the musical equivalent of going into a job interview, saying fuck you then pissing in the plant pot, e.g. feedback then 25 seconds of drum noise and guitar noodling. It’s a tried, tested, and effective way of introducing your band to the world, and I like it.

After that’s out of the way the song unravels as a slow/mid tempo rocker, it has that kind of laid back northern white boy feel, like they picked E minor so the Bassist could play his bass with his right hand and eat a meat and potato pie with his left during the verses. Not that that’s a bad thing, I do like the implied harmonies between Harrington’s Guitar and Livingstone’s Vocals over this lazy groove, it creates a nice Hippy Trippy vibe reminiscent of the Verve back when they were a good band (‘A Storm in Heaven’ anyone?).

This then leads us to the chorus and the overall sentiment of the song, ‘I send a message out to ya…I’m gonna get it back’, an ambiguous chant of mild rebellion, then verse then more mild rebellion, its at this point you think ‘I hope this song goes somewhere’.

Its at this point the song goes somewhere, from a standard rock song into a pop philosophy master class. Livingstone dictates a spoken word ramble about a man on a boat and on the boat is his own mind and in his mind is a sandwich and on that sandwich is cheese and pickle, but he doesn’t like cheese and pickle, why would his own mind do this to him, he then finds a map, heads to a lagoon, but then he realises ‘He’s been here before’. Yeah, I like this bit the best.

In conclusion ‘The Illusion’ is a very listenable track and the band has some nice chops. Its hard to Judge a band from one song but I hope on subsequent releases they lean more towards the psychedelic and less towards the mod pop. Overall I’d say, Give it a go.

Check them out at www.thechangeslive.co.uk