Album Review - Will Stoker & The Embers

Will Stoker & The Embers
Self Titled

Shock Records

Review: Liam Ducey

I HAVE always considered the best kind of music is the kind you can't really pin down. The kind that doesn't belong to any easily-identifiable sub-genre, but rather fits in between the cracks of music that we're comfortable to label punk rock, indie, hardcore or whatever other genre you want to go with. The kind of music that doesn't conform because it doesn't need to - it can be whatever it wants to be without limiting itself to a particular audience. Suffice to say this kind of music, these kinds of bands, are hard to come by, but when you strike that kind of gold you should hang on to it, because there's an overwhelming amount of mediocrity out there.

Perth's Will Stoker and The Embers are one such band.Like nearly every band that takes their name as Will Stoker and The Embers do - think Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - the focus is undoubtedly on Will Stoker. This isn't to say The Embers - drummer Ashley Doodkorte, bassist Ryan Dux and guitarists Luke Dux (Of I'm Luke Dux fame) and Gareth Bevan (Of I'ma Kill Luke Dux fame) - are unimportant. Bevan and Dux may form the most potent dual-guitar attacks in Perth, as it goes, but when you've got a singer as versatile and charismatic at Stoker, you put the man in front of the band and leave him there.

He sets the tone on the opening track Tickets Please, a pretty straight forward rock and roll number that allows Stoker to show off his chops and gives The Embers a chance to open up the throttle for the verse before reigning things in for the chorus.The King is where things get really good - Stoker delivers his lines in a manic double time, before allowing his towering vocals to soar during the chorus. The album slows down in the middle section, but so versatile is the band and Stoker that while the songs may be slower, the urgency never lags. It carries an energy that's hard to dispute, an energy that is equal parts Stoker and The Embers.

Personally I think they made a slight mis-step with the track-listing - they probably should have closed with In The Belly Of The Beast rather than Penelope, in my opinion - but when you've got your Ipod on shuffle that's hardly a problem. Will Stoker and the Embers should be playing the Prince of Wales Hotel sooner or later, if my sources are right, and when they do they will be definitely worth checking out. They're impossible to pin down and infinitely entertaining.