Broken Stone carved in rock

THE BROKEN STONE: A self-titled album recorded by The Broken Stone and featuring, from left, Lincoln Wright (drums), Ryan Raggett (bass), Quannah Nickerson (vocals), and Adrian Athy (songwriter/vocals/ lead guitar) is now available on Spotify.Picture supplied

The Broken Stone, with lead singer Adrian Athy on the memorably phrased “screaming eagle guitars”, is the name of the band's album which is now available on streaming platform Spotify.

Originally released in 2014, the album includes the previously unreleased recording Autumn, which was highlighted in The Gisborne Herald on Tuesday as a song in support of mental health week.

In his review for the album, soundblab.com contributor Warwick Stubbs describes The Broken Stone as “rumbling voraciously at you like the rebel offspring of Stevie Ray Vaughan — not content to live in the shadow of their influences, but to break out of the mould completely”.

The track Don't Love You Anymore starts off with a standard rock swing and Athy drawling something about wandering about the town wondering why his baby has let him down, says Stubbs.

“When (Quannah) Nickerson enters on vocals, the song picks up and takes this rock ‘n' roll swagger to the next level.”

The same might be said of Autumn in which Athy reaches for a whisky and tobacco-cured gravitas in the intro and succeeds when it anchors Nickerson's ethereal vocals. The multi-layered moods of the song shift through country ballad, to rocking soul to hard-out R&B to progressive with a screaming eagles guitar lead break. The song focuses on the passing of depression, of coming through. The lyrics climb out of the trough of depression to exult.

“Raise my arms up to the sky/Scream to my maker — why/Feel the sun shining on my face/I feel her warmth, I feel her grace/And watch my winter turn to spring.”

The Broken Stone can be heard on Spotify under the Lazy Fifty banner.