Hurricane is the third album from Liverpudlian rock outfit The Jokers and whilst it has a strong classic rock vibe to it, there’s also a modern twist of freshness to the album which helps ensure the album doesn’t get written off as a release from a band that is stuck in the past.
The balance between the old-school and modern sounds is good; whilst the vocal approach certainly leans more towards classic rock sensibilities, they are also decidedly fresh-sounding with a lot of emotion for good measure. This is particularly evident in fifth track Summertime, which is a softer and more acoustic piece and really gives the frontman time to shine, and the group vocals in Dream are filled with good vibes.
Instrumentally Hurricane takes more of a ‘safer’ route, with not a lot of deviation from one another and is fairly simplistic for the most part. Whilst there is a good amount of movement to the music and the flow of the album as a whole is good, with each track moving rather seamlessly into the next, on the other hand, there is a lack of variation between the songs so at times Hurricane is perhaps not the most engaging of listens. It’s a shame because there’s real potential here but The Jokers haven’t quite reached their full potential yet.
Hurricane certainly isn’t a bad release but it does feel like The Jokers can do more at times to make this into an album you’ll remember, rather than just stick on as a bit of background music.
6/10
