The Snakes are self appointed heroes of country rock all the way from Muswell Hill in North London.
They are not the scaremongers the album title might suggest and neither is the record intended as an obituary.
At times, the band's third album takes the country honk of The Stones to inject some good old fashioned R & R thrust into staight-laced C & W.
The title track morphs into a loose jam with a bit a sax thrown in for the full Exile On Main St effect (in their dreams!) and the closing song, Here We Go Again, has distinctly Jagger-esque vocals. But, not surprisingly, this is a very poor relation to the real thing.
The rest settles for safe & soft country rock with predictable guitar solos and banal lyrics like "Loving you is too hard" (Too Hard) ; "Sometimes you've just gotta be a man" (The Band Played On.
Titles like Make Mine A Broken Heart and Look What We Could Have Been are play by numbers break up tunes.
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The most interesting track is the slow bluesy lament of The Last Train. This actually sounds like it sneaked in from another album with a moodier downbeat feel and 'woe is me' vocals to match.
Simon Moor, on guitars and vocals, wrote or co-wrote all the other tracks except Jerry's Chair which is by John O'Sullivan.
The one non original is a passable cover of Byrd Gene Clark's The French Girl
These are solid tunes, decently played but too bland and formulaic to set the pulse racing.
The Snakes' website
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