PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER.

I’ve been waiting for a band like this for a long time.

I discovered them on the Sunday morning of the four-day Yarmageddon 11: Legends of Rock festival in Great Yarmouth this weekend just gone. They were the first band on in the V Lounge, and as soon as they started soundchecking, I perked up at their musical reference points: The Doors, Pink Floyd, The Stranglers, Inspiral Carpets.

I immediately became interested in photographing PHR and chatted to Simon Rinaldo (below), the band’s keyboard meister, impressed by his choice of paisley shirt and mod-style jacket. He shares with me a love of The Stranglers, citing Rattus Norvegicus (1977) as one of his favourite albums by the band. Simon’s a huge fan of The Stranglers’ organist Dave Greenfield, and talked knowledgably about the main keyboard The Doors’ Ray Manzarek used – a Vox Continental – explaining that, until his multi-instrumentalist son Lucas recently joined PHR to play bass on their new material, he played keyboard bass just like Manzarek did.

Funnily enough, drummer Chris Thatcher resembles The Doors’ guitarist Robbie Krieger which, in the musical context of PHR, is only right. He dispenses busy, John Densmore-esque drum fills, while Rinaldo delights in Manzarek/Greenfield-style keyboard runs. Make no mistake, though, this band aren’t pastiche: their swampy, blues-heavy rumble is the backing to what sounds like, in vocalist Lee Vernon’s seasoned but fragile vocal style, the inner dialogues of a confused and sometimes disturbed mind.

The two albums I bought from their merch stall are pleasingly different. Urgently paced, If the Devil Cast His Net (2016) has the feel of the Small Faces at their most heavy and psychedelic, viz a viz ‘Tin Soldier’, ‘Wham Bam Thank You Mam’ and ‘Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake’. No bad thing in my opinion. The opener, ‘Help Me Down from the Trees’, is feverish paranoia set to a fevered melody, while PHR show their softer side on the reflective, low key and melancholy ‘Walk the Streets’.

Fantasy Reigns (2019) is more introspective, musically and lyrically. It sounds like a split personality trying to reconcile itself, especially on the brooding, thundering semi-instrumental ‘Belly of the Whale’. The concluding ‘Into the Blue’, meanwhile, is a sprawling soundscape that PHR can rightly claim as their own ‘Down in the Sewer’, the closing epic on Rattus Norvegicus. On both albums, guitar flourishes from Andy Paris and keyboard riffs courtesy of Rinaldo occasionally bring to mind ‘Golden Brown’ and ‘Riders on the Storm’ which, again, in my opinion is no bad thing.

Live, PHR stormed the V Lounge. Tight, loud and focused, they swept along the early rising Yarmageddoners with their bluesy psychedelia and, as their set went on, more and more people came in to fill the remaining seats or stand and watch appreciatively. PHR’s performance was, quite simply, a triumph: the queue for the merchandise stall afterwards testified as much.

They’re currently working on their fifth album, and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with. A band that has its own typeface – and yes, I’m thinking of the stylised font on The Stranglers’ The Gospel According to the Meninblack (1981) – has to be pretty special.

Watch this space.

Pearl Handled Revolver's tribute to Dave Greenfield can be viewed here:
https://youtu.be/Qj_h_v12OKU

Photographs © Robert Fairclough 2023.