79 NOWHERE FREEWAY
The Answer From: Revival, 2011
Upon its release, Classic Rock said that Nowhere Freeway “is irresistible, an AOR Born To Run, shot through with dead-end romanticism”, and we still stand by that assessment. This is The Answer at the top of their game. The band glide irresistibly through a song that hums with poise and class. It has roots in the styles of Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher, but also offers a passing nod to Aerosmith, The Black Crowes and Sammy Hagar.
The track opens with a simple, tremoloed guitar riff from Paul Mahon, before vocalist Cormac Neeson bursts in wearing his heart on his sleeve. What truly elevates it to another level is the presence of Lynne Jackaman, who at the time was the singer in Saint Jude. What she and Neeson achieve is a brilliant interaction that sounds so organic you’d think they were being spontaneous. Each time one of them raises their game with another fiery vocal line, the other responds emphatically.
It was originally released as a single from 2011’s Revival, The Answer’s third album and perhaps their finest to date, by which time Neeson had also matured as a lyricist. ‘I take my chances, I don’t care if I burn’, he snaps in an ode to the open spaces he so obviously craved.
To focus on the vocalists and lyrics is not to take anything away from the taut instrumentation as the band deliver the sort of widescreen backdrop that soon marked out The Answer as one of the most energetic and exciting bands around.
You can hear how much they’d learned from touring alongside the likes of AC/DC, Whitesnake, The Who and the Rolling Stones.
“A huge amount,” Neeson says, of the impact those elder statemen had on them. “You don’t watch 133 AC/DC shows, as we did, and not have something rub off on you. The way they go about things is just so tight and professional. They were good to us. They told us never to forget where we’d come from. That meant a lot.”
If there’s one track to highlight to anyone not familiar with this band’s catalogue just why they should care, then Nowhere Freeway is it.
““You don’t watch 133 AC/DC shows, as we did, and not have something rub off on you.”