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Sage
Demo
4-song CD
Recorded @ Chills Studio
The latest batch of tunes from Northern Pinellas County’s wall-of-Gibson heroes (recently truncated to a quartet, with the departure of guitarist John Marker, who did contribute tracks here) shows a lot of growth and ambition. The crushing ‘Asleep’ is certainly their heaviest track to date, grooving with a little Quicksand influence but still unabashedly rock n’ roll, and ‘Wish’ and ‘In My World’ mix timeless radio-ready vibes with a little pop hookage and plenty of volume. The raw and low-key acoustic reading of ‘I’m Down’, despite an extremely overt Oasis inspiration, delivers with rudimentary charm. Mike Francisco’s vocals are more confident, as is the rhythm section, and the band is finally making some harmonic use of those three guitars, mixing it up as opposed to all constantly chugging away at the same riff. The production is light years beyond their previous disc, also recorded at Chills, and all but completely avoids that you-know-it’s-a-local-band thinness that plagues so many recordings with less than, like, sixty guitar tracks. More grounded in their roots than the current crop of soundalike modern rockers, Sage seem to be carving their own niche by referencing styles too many other bands ignore. It’s not stunningly original, but here, it rocks.
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