Review Summary: Build a fire without the balls to burn the forest down.
As a musician in my own right, I take careful notice of the respective styles on display by the songwriters, the band, the producer, what have you. Doing this helps me to place a band at a precise sound at a certain time, and exactly when the change took place. You’ll find, for example, that Morrissey used to resolve his vocal melodies on major thirds on early Smiths tracks, but his decision to do this less over time made his musical career much more gratifying. When I do that for Greta Van Fleet’s
From The Fires, I find none of this band’s indicative traits to be unique to them.
Rolling Stone recently put up a video of this band naming several influences; you can imagine my reaction when, wouldn’t you know it, they made no mention of a particular group. I don’t know if they purposefully avoid answering questions about the source of their fame, but it’s is a bit disingenuous. Feel free to look up old clips of this band doing Led Zeppelin covers, because they exist. They were practically a cover band, and many people would argue they still are.
I find that with sound-alikes, people get sick of reading the obvious comparison between Greta Van Fleet and Led Zeppelin. Let’s focus on how this band is not like Led Zeppelin then. Well, Greta Van Fleet is a band of three brothers and a random drummer. I think that’s kind of cute.
I wish I had more positive things to say, but damn, the bass playing in these songs is nothing but near inaudible plunking on root notes. How Sam Kiszka doesn’t get bored out of his mind is beyond me. Listening to the drums on this album sounds like we’ve erased history. Danny Wagner heard "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction" and thought, ‘precisely, this is the drum sound I want, all the time.’
The lead singer, Josh Kiszka, borders on Brian Johnson levels of abrasive without straying from the comparison that must not be named. Listen closely to vocals that open "Highway Tune", the way he sings, "you are my special", "so sweet, so fine", then finally "my my, my my". This reminds me of someone, but I can’t quite put my finger on who that would be. Ah well, moving on…
I haven’t talked about those guitars. Those damned guitars. Rather than create a texture, painting a picture, they exist in the song playing the same riffs for a while until a breakdown borrowed from, yes, you guessed it! The endless bending is embedded in my skull much like Jim Carrey’s most annoying sound in the world from Dumb and Dumber. Instead of laughing, though, I find I’m rolling my eyes in-between phases of trying to forget I’m listening to this and placing where I’ve heard this sound before.
Here’s another distinction: Greta Van Fleet actually awards proper writing and publishing when they play other people’s music. This is evident on the fourth track, "A Change Is Gonna Come". I don’t know about you, but I’ve never wished a particular singer covered this song.
Yeah, this is no fun. I don’t even hate the album, but here’s the thing. I like the controversy better. Here in the music world we should be rewarding those who misbehave
musically. Josh Kiszka and company seem fun to hang out with, I suppose, but where’s the oral sex during turbulence? I can’t help but roll my eyes at this indie playlist version of three Led Zeppelin songs. (If you’re wondering which three, it’s "Your Time Is Gonna Come", "Hey Hey What Can I Do" and "Whole Lotta Love"). As evident in the lyrics and the music, this band is trying has hard as possible to say nothing at all, and in the process, their music has already aged worse than The White Album.
Greta Van Fleet is an opportunity for Rolling Stone and other beer-bellied uncles to pretend that Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones are the cornerstones of music history. Back when this sound was new and interesting, that is, almost fifty years ago,
Led Zeppelin IV got a one-paragraph review. If we make this into an equation, subtract the eclectic influence, the sexual stomp grooves, the monster rhythm section, and the satanic undertones and you get something like this. I almost added plagiarism to that list, then I caught myself.
