Review: St Phillip's Escalator - Endless Trip

Label: Living Eye

Released: 2006

Being a revivalist is a difficult task. How do you stay true to the past yet make it relevant in the present? The simple answer is...you rock! St Phillip's Escalator does just that.

There is no question where the heart of this Rochester, NY trio lies. St Phillip's Escalator brings 60s garage rock to you in a way that's authentic and fresh at the same time. From start to finish, Endless Trip is a nonstop assault of fuzzy guitars, loose rhythms and ghost-of-Keith-Moon drumming that captures both the naivety of the 60s and the headlong dash into losing its virginity. This is no small achievement for a band with 40 years of history and analysis between itself and those halcyon days they're recapturing. They take the sweet pop sense of the British Invasion on dark walk through the psychedelic blues.

Produced and engineered by Chesterfield Kings Andy Babiak and Greg Prevost, who know a thing or two about the garage rock revival, helps St Phillip's Escalator create the most vivid picture of the past since Redd Kross recorded Teen Babes from Monsanto. With neo-garage bands popping up everywhere over the last few years, St Phillip's Escalator is one of the few that present the format undistilled. Endless Trip isn't just a snapshot though. It's more like a time machine.

Rating: 8/10

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