Artist Jonathan Tyler And The Northern Lights

Into every generation there comes a band dedicated to revivifying the bloated corpse of classic rock. Jonathan Tyler And The Northern Lights is the standard-bearer for this generation. Trading in the kind of amped-up blues riffs and soulful yelping that must have sounded really fresh in 1967, there’s nothing new or innovative to be found on Pardon Me, the act’s major-label debut. There are lots of songs like “Young & Free” and “Gypsy Woman,” which sound like lost classics from the heyday of FM AOR radio or the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. That’s not to say it’s bad—it’s quite solid, taken for what it is—but it’s hard to get too excited about such a moribund, hidebound sound, regardless of how much energy accompanies its delivery. 

Updated 12/21/2010