Milwaukee’s Young Revelators have beaten the sophomore jinx—the problem afflicting rock bands that load their debut albums with their best songs and have no good answer to the question: What’s next? The Revelators’ second album, the follow-up to last year’s five-song disc, is even better than their debut.
The new disc, unlike its predecessor, is a full-length effort with 13 songs. Their roots remain firmly in ’70s-era blues rock, complete with tour de force slide guitar on some numbers along with Hendrix-style incendiary funk rock on one track, “Just a While.” Alejandro Martinez is a powerfully expressive vocalist and his guitar playing builds into sonic bonfires as drummer Frankie Martinez and bassist Benjamin Michalski build rhythms as solid as a row of brick houses. Co-producer and engineer Gary Tanin, a Milwaukee music veteran, superintended a dynamic sonic flow from harder to softer and back again, making All I See enjoyable—like the great albums of the ’70s—as a whole, not just a collection of parts.
The Young Revelators’ CD release party is on Friday, Jan. 15 at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, 1001 E. Locust St.
