A PIECE OF THE ACTION

The SRB are a versatile Birmingham three-piece outfit made up of experimental Singer/Songwriter Samuel Rogers, alongside the ‘Funk Punk’ Chris Moulton on Bass and Samuel’s very own Keith Moon-like best friend, Harry O’Dowd on drums.

The band originally formed back in 2013 and soon released their live EP ‘Turn It Up!!!’. Their songs range from Rock, Soul, Funk, Psychedelic Rock, Blues and more. After a good stint of playing gigs and events up and down the country, supporting the likes of Stone Foundation, The Moons and The Spitfires, The SRB eventually disbanded with Samuel and Chris going to work on other music projects such as White Flag Dares.

Then in 2020 when a loyal member of their fan base ‘The SRB Army’, Jack Baudet sadly passed away, his wish was for The SRB to perform at his wake. After a few messages sent back and forth between Sam, Harry & Chris, The SRB gladly got back together for the occasion and indeed bob toured Jack’s wish and performed at his wake.

After the performance it was like they’d never been away. The band had a good conversation with Jack’s son Marcus about the band recording the old songs they never recorded the first time around for old time’s sake and for their loyal supporter, ‘King’ Jack. This sparked the return of The SRB to get to work on their long-awaited debut album and so the band started work on ‘A Piece Of The Action”.

‘A Piece Of The Action’ started life in March 2021 with John Rivers, who had previously worked on The Specials hit ‘Ghost Town’, and Eddie Hewitt at Woodbine Studios in Leamington. Former Ocean Colour Scene guitarist Andy Bennett also accompanied the band in the studio on various tracks.

The band picked nine of their old songs to record and a brand new song Sam had written during lockdown for the album, which was released on Friday 11th February, with the album launch being held at The Night Owl in Birmingham on the same night.

Here at The Songbird HQ we have been lucky enough to be sent the album to review, so here goes…..

The album consists of the following nine tracks:

A Piece Of The Action 

Legshaker

Acid Boom 

Bulletbiter

Call To Arms 

Well, I’m Sorry (Home) 

The Fortune Teller (That Got It All Wrong) 

Livin’ With The Zombies 

Rest Easy 

Moving On To Yesterday

The album kicks off with a bang with “A Piece Of The Action” with its raw, crusty assault of guitar riffs and fist pounding rhythms this is a fantastic opener for the album driving us head first into track 2 “Leg Shaker”which is my personal favourite and certainly is a leg shaker! (including while making kids lunchboxes at 10pm on a Monday night)

It’s high tempo strings and drums start the track off in an almost striptease fashion with its foot stomping beats and clapability. This is sure to be a floorfiller when performed live.

Next we move onto the albums third track “Acid Boom” an upbeat track of jangly psychedelia with a cheeky nod to garage rock.

Psychedelics are also favoured in Track no. 7 “The Fortune Teller”, swimming through youthful drums for an infectious melody.

Drawls of “Rest Easy” (track 9 on the album) are unashamedly country, with a Bowie esque influence a truly unique combination that somehow works!!

“Moving Onto Yestetday” a strong finish. A poignant base with nostalgic reverberations classier than expected.

Overall I truly enjoyed the “experience “ of listening to this album, and I would call it exactly that, an experience. The album truly exemplifies the bands unique ability to take us from heady blues, to upbeat indie pop almost seamlessly. A musical journey if you will! . The lad’s place in indie rock, I feel, is now trickier to define, making it interesting to see how they will utilise their untameable energy next.

Finally, a little note from Sam;

“I’m so pleased that we have managed to get these songs out there for everyone to hear at long last! Most of these songs were written nearly 10 years ago and I thought they would never see the light of day again once we split up the first time around so it’s a huge relief that the songs have come to life again. I’m even more proud of the fact that we’ve made this album off our own back’s with no proper management or record label backing us, which comes to show our hard work has paid off. We wanted to keep the album fairly raw as we are a raw live act and it has a real SRB live feel to it. Whatever happens next after the album comes out, who knows! But it’s been fun”

Words by Lydia Rose