Half Step Down - Overtures In Outerspace

That Half Step Down’s music has always been an eclectic mix of blues, funk, old school rock’n’roll and some other riff-raff thrown in is a known fact. That HSD started out with a bang in 2005, winning accolades, as a brilliant new band is not a grand revelation. The fact that HSD came out with an independent debut album within four years of getting together, well, in the Indian context, is quite a feat!

After a revolving chair of line-ups, HSD has had a settled line-up for the past couple of years, and the addition of Srijan Mahajan on drums has been, IMHO, ruddy brilliant! I remember going to one of their gigs a few years ago, the gig that Rohan Solomon filled in for someone in the band, and I was left wondering what he was doing back with the band! For a listener, it’s good to know who’s playing on the album now, and consequently, what to expect.

Overtures to Outerspace, the album title, from one of the band’s most popular pre-release singles, starts off with ‘Working Hour’, a song that is strangely reminiscent of some Zero/Red Cube work, in a good way. Wait; there is hardly anything that can remind you of Zero in a bad way, so hey, two thumbs up to that! The rock’n’roll style will never go out of fashion in India, and HSD take full advantage of the fact to come up  with a groovy track with a tight rhythm section.

Up next, ‘Not For Sale’, a track that grows on you slowly and steadily, is a little clichéd in parts. The fundamental issue that I have with some of HSD’s songs is the lyrical content. The whole ‘big band’ lyrics style isn’t what HSD comes across as, and trying to keep away from the whole catastrophic crowd pleasing lyrics is what the doctor asks of them.

‘Knocking at the Back of My Head’ is another track we’re all familiar with. The Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds feel works for ‘Knockin’ and quite frankly, if you don’t love the track, a little Himesh therapy is in order for you.

My favourite track on the album, and I am sure, one that is a great hit with most of you as well, is ‘Girl Not Guitar’. ‘Someday I’m gonna be a big, big star’, that’s how the chorus goes. And this track is definitely the star. With some inspired keys and awesomely chord-work, the track makes for ideal rockstar poetry.

What follows with ‘Circles’ and ‘Stories of the Sun’ is HSD experimenting with their experiment. A musically different direction that makes you think if you’ve started playing Incubus’ A Crow Left of the Murder, which is again a good thing.

A little trouble with the genre-defying work that Half Step Down put out is that there is no identifiable Half Step Down sound and although almost every song is likeable, it does seem to remind you of some other artist or some other song. I don’t really know if that’s a good thing, but hey, if it works for them, it works for me.

The album comes with fourteen pages of artwork, with the font for every song title different, reflecting the fact that every song is indeed different and unique in the most HSD way possible. And the fact that the album art resembles the cover for an animated movie is all the more reason why it’ll probably be a collector’s item in the Indian circuit.