Noel Nocciolo Brings You Steel Train & Terrible Thrills Vol. 1
New Jersey-based rock band, Steel Train, released their self-titled and third full-length album today. It is the first release for Terrible Thrills, the band’s own label. As gutsy as it is to release an album as unique as today’s self-titled album, especially one as the focal point of their own business venture, it is gutsy times ten to simultaneously release the very same album, but with al twelve original songs covered by female artists, as the band has done with Terrible Thrills Vol. 1. Steel Train went balls out on this album, as epitomized by both of these releases.
Terrible Thrills Vol. 1, (Terrible Thrills, named after Rocky Horror) the all-female accompanying album, is all over the place, stylistically. I don’t know if I absolutely LOVE all of the choices made in the covers, BUT I definitely respect their existence. The women who left their mark on Steel Train’s work are quite a list of eyebrow raisers and bad-asses in their own right. Here’s a look at a few:
Angel Deradoorian of indie-outfit The Dirty Projectors took on You Are Dangerous, and made it a spine-tingling, almost Prince-like R&B-on-an-organ tune.
Actress Alia Shawkat (yep, Maeby Funke!) turns S.O.G. Burning In Hell, whose Steel Train studio-version is akin to a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band rocker from the Born To Run era, into an old timey-piano ditty.
Tegan & Sara recorded the album’s first single, Turnpike Ghost, and RAC remixed it into lounge-y electronica.
Scarlett Johansson sounds like she sang underwater into all kinds of sound board shenanigans on Bullet. I kept waiting for an accompanying video of a new end-credits sequence for Lost In Translation.
Nellie McKay scared the shit out of me with her rendition of Touch Me Bad, which I guess based solely on the title of the song, makes sense?
The Go Go’s Charlotte Caffey and her daughter, singer Astrid McDonald, put a carefree spin with a deftly remixed Bloody Lips.
As for the Steel Train self-title album itself, it reads with touches of Bruce Springsteen, circa 1972-1975. Before everyone flips out with such a bold comparison, hear me out.
Without Springsteens’ Greetings From Asbury Park, his sound could not have developed into The Wild, The Innocent or The E Street Shuffle, and without both of those albums, we wouldn’t have the wall of sound of 1975’s Born To Run. You can liken the progression of any good, trailblazing, classic band in the same fashion for their first three records; discovering who they are, who needs to be in the band and who doesn’t, what instruments they want to use in production for the album, and what kinds of stories they want to tell. The same can be said for Steel Train’s first two records; it’s like all they experimented with on previous releases has finally readied them for this album.
Springsteen’s songs read almost like stories from a diary; his or someone else’s. Steel Train’s songs are like an impressionist painting; flashes of this and that, that you don’t necessarily need to see up close to understand and enjoy. Even if they hail from the same, proud state of New Jersey, the artists are not the same. The members of Steel Train grew up playing in punk bands in rec rooms, foreign legion halls and firehouses. The frenetic energy of the past is present here on Steel Train….but so are fist pumping hints of The E Street Band. See? Arcade Fire were not the only current band out today influenced by New Jersey’s prodigal son.
If you want to hear bold, rock and roll with pop-do-wop flashes and assorted emotions, buy this record. And if you need to be reminded that in life, nothing thought-provoking was achieved by a lack of risk-taking, buy the female counterpart. Both are available today and highly recommended!
