Bedouin Soundclash – Street Gospel

Following up a successful record is always difficult. The fans are anticipating it, the critics are wanting something to discuss and the labels want a hit. After the success of the hit single When The Night Feels My Song and their CD, Sounding A Mosaic, Bedouin Soundclash has a lot riding on the Street Gospel – their highly anticipated follow-up. The question is, is it a successful follow-up? In some ways yes, in others, no.

You see, somewhat similar to what happened on Sounding A Mosaic, Street Gospels suffers from inequality: for every good song on Street Gospel there’s an equally bad track. For instance, you get a track like Walls Fall Down – a live favorite for a few years now and the first single from the album -which is a soulful, powerful, energetic reggae song with soft vocals and a simple but amazing guitar riff that just blows the listener away. Soon afterwards though, a song like Hush comes on which just ruins the momentum and feel of the album. Mainly vocally driven, the song is too slow and soft without a real backbone to it making it a rather boring track similar to Steel Train in some slight aspects.

This becomes all too annoying all too quickly, particularly when it’s so evident that the band can write some amazing music. Trinco Dog captivates the listener after the first listen thanks to its wonderful upstroke.St. Andrews takes a few listens for it to really sink in, but once it does the acoustic song soon becomes one of the highlights and Gunships has a slight Clash ring to it (especially in the chorus). They’re even able to successfully pull of the mellower, slower tracks well with Bells Of 59 and 12:59 Lullaby which proves that there’s no real reason for them to suffer at the slow songs like Hush or the dub trackJealousy And The Get Free.

However, the best thing about this record is most definitely the superb sound quality. Everything is crisp and clear, something that is lacking in many releases these days. The drums, the claps, the guitar, bass and vocals – everything is perceptible and clear in the mix as it is very bare bones and not focused on smashing as much noise into it at once; and that, in itself, is a redeeming quality of the record.

So while Street Gospel is far from being the best record of the year, it is still a relatively strong follow-up to Sounding A Mosaic. With a few bumps scattered throughout, the record could have been better but songs like Trinco Dog and Walls Fall Down will surely become Bedouin Soundclash fan favorites.