Flamboyant band finds the perfect path master
It’s destiny, really. Foxy Shazam is opening for The Darkness, whose leader, Justin Hawkins, produced Foxy’s new album, The Church of Rock and Roll, which is the Cincinnati band’s third.
The Darkness cheerfully goes over the top and laughs at itself while doing it. The overused word flamboyant comes to mind but in this case is appropriate. Hawkins likes the glamour of rock ’n’ roll, mixes big hair with Queen, and has found a sympathizer in Foxy Shazam.
Or maybe that should read that Foxy Shazam found a sympathizer in Justin Hawkins. Either way, the two seem to be on the same path. The Church . . . album occasionally indulges in the mythmaking of Mott The Hoople, post David Bowie, and, in singer Eric Nally, sometimes recalls the first Sweeney Todd album with Nick Gilder. Although “Roxy Roller” is probably too Canadian for Foxy to have heard, the six-piece band could do it well.
So, if The Church of Rock and Roll satisfies Hawkins’ flamboyance quotient, Nally is more straightforward, more earnest, about Foxy Shazam’s career.
“We had written with Justin in the past,” says Nally. “We were on the same wavelength. We definitely thought alike. He thinks the same way I do.”
There is a discernible element of parody but it’s countered by a sense of purpose evident in a would-be anthem such as “Forever Together.”
“Everything we do is very serious,” Nally says. “It would be weird to someone else.”
That is, the band’s juggling act is no act. You really have to know how to juggle. Nally, Loren Turner, Sky White, the mono-named Daisy, Aaron Mcveigh and wild card trumpeter Alex Nauth know what they are playing at.
“Yeah,” Nally says. “We knew what we wanted to do. It was easy to make this record. We just wrote the songs front to back. It was very clear to us.
“The way we came at the record was just not hearing something I could put my faith into, which I can’t find any more.”
Which suggests that Foxy Shazam felt that something was missing that it could provide, a hole in the market.
“Yeah, I hope so,” says Nally. “I hope it can be that. But I can’t be the judge of that. The audience has to do that.”