Forty Years Ago - Part Two - STONEHOUSE - Stonehouse Creek

This five part series of reviews were originally written as part of a much bigger article on a different website covering a number of albums that came out during 1971.

STONEHOUSE “Stonehouse Creek”, 1971 It’s often difficult to judge an album by its cover. However STONEHOUSE chose to throw their red herring in their first song which begins with a melodic pop song. The band then on “Hobo” show their hand at hard rock with piano playing in the background and high vocals that would be the envy of many a female jazz or blues singer in the foreground. “Cheater” is very much heavy rock due to the guitar tone and equals other heavy bands of the year. “Nightmare” has a huge guitar boogie feel despite the piano playing in parts of the song. The drums and bass compliment the huge guitar tone on tracks like “Down, Down”and leads that command attention. Often the production, which sounds tinny due to the sound of feedback left on the first few songs, means that unlike BLACK SABBATH’s “Master of Reality” it sounds somewhat dated and doesn’t demand the volume to be turned up all the way through.