Band : The Parlor Mob
Album Title : And You Were A Crow
Label : Roadrunner Records
Distributor : CNR - Concreteweb Promotion Office
Release Date : 25/05/2009
Review : CD

As a debut album, And You Were A Crow clearly demonstrates the band's ability to keep things simple and in the pocket.

With bass lines and drum kicks more like a heartbeat than a rapid fire machine gun, The Parlor Mob get to the core of a pulse and keep the musical activity pumping. “Hard times” is a toe-tappin' rocker with a Kossoff guitar tone that is to die for. The ParlorMob’s music is alive and full of fire right from the opening chord. Not every track rocks hard, some of this CD is slow and lagging, however, the majority of this CD cooks like nobody's business. It's hard rock that isn't afraid to get bluesy. In fact, much of this CD could be called bluesy hard rock, complete with harmonica and boogie riffs galore

Fans of classic rock bands like Zeppelin, Free, Aerosmith and Janis Joplin will find something to like about And You Were A Crow and is yet another fine example that classic rock is far from dead and gone.

87/100

Cosmicmasseur.

Band : The Parlor Mob
Album Title : And You Were A Crow
Label : Roadrunner Records
Distribution : CNR – Concreteweb Promotion Office
Release date : June 2009
Review : CD

The Parlor Mob is an American retro-rock band, formed in 2004 in New Jersey.
The fivesome were formerly known as What About Frank? and released a self-titled album a couple of years ago before changing their name and releasing “And You Were A Crow”.
The European release of this album now follows one year later than the American release, where the record already came out in May 2008.
The youngsters look like a seventies band and one can say that some musical inspiration comes from that same time era. Some names I can name as an example are for instance Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. But some more recent colleagues like for instance Year Long Disaster, The Answer and Wolfmother are also good references to mention.
And since the voice of The Parlor Mob-singer Mark Melicia bears such a lot of resemblance to the voice of Wolfmother’s Andrew Stockdale, I would even go one step further and complain about the lack of originality The Parlor Mob displays. Where Wolfmother made quite an impression with their debut album, this time I can’t say the same for the bluesy rock ‘n roll of The Parlor Mob. Hearing the sometimes too long and boring songs of The Parlor Mob (for example the nine minutes lasting “Tide Of Tears”) makes me even long more and more for the new record of Wolfmother that is scheduled for later this year.
“And You Were A Crow” contains 12 songs and has a playing time of 51 minutes.
Songs worth mentioning, are the opening track "Hard Times", “Dead Wrong”, “The Kids”, “Angry Young Girl”, "Carnival Of Crows", “Real Hard Headed”, “My Favorite Heart To Break” and the final track, the acoustic driven “Can’t Keep No Good Boy Down”.
The Parlor Mob is doing an European tour in August 2009, including festival appearances at for instance Pukkelpop (Belgium) on August 22nd and Lowlands (the Netherlands).

70/100

Erik.