Arena rock with melody and without cliches. The Who in the 70’s without the attitude. What The Move would have sounded like if they were young and were making records in 2000. Too young to have raised your lighter at a show at your local arena? Well, get out the BICs, give it a flick and raise your arm man…because The Shazam are gonna rock your world.

This is their second recording, both produced by Brad Jones (producer of the pop classic Kon Tiki by Cotton Mather). They live with a lot of comparisons to Cheap Trick and other melodic rockers, but the sound is indeed their own.

From the resounding, melodic opener “Super Tuesday”, with its clever lyric, to the chugging Aerosmith Rocks sounding, “Gonna Miss Yer Train”, The Shazam puts on a clinic on how to write a song that has power without sacrificing structure and melody. Indeed, the great bands have done it like The Who and Cheap Trick. But it would diminish their work to pigeonhole them where this band has the goods without the hype and the ‘70s/‘80s cartoonish, Spinal Tap, cock-rock personality.

Highlights for me are the following tracks in addition to the opener and closer mentioned above: “The Stranded Stars”, great rock anthem; “RU Receiving”, great pumping chorus; “Chipper Cherry Daylily” which reminds me of the very cool band The Creation (Shel Talmy, The Who producer, produced them in the ‘60s).

This is an example of the great underground music not being made by the major labels. This recording was released by The Not Lame Recording Company, a great independent label. Buy this today.