REVIEW - Jerry Lucky (www.jerrylucky.com)

"I admire a band with intestinal fortitude and tenacity because that’s what it’s going to take if you choose to play progressive rock music. I got an email a while back from Kyle Minnick of the new band The Tea Club asking if I’d be interested in hearing their CD entitled General Winter’s Secret Museum? Of course I said absolutely! Even the band name and CD title sounded intriguing enough. So here’s the scoop with The Tea Club…they’re a trio of young guys consisting of Pat McGowan (vocals, guitar, bass), Dan McGowan (vocals, guitar) and Kyle Minnick (drums). The band was actually discovered by hardcore ....New Jersey.... producer Tim Gilles who saw the band on myspace and contacted them expressing his love of prog.

Let me start off by saying The Tea Club sounds great. It’s a new and fresh take of progressive rock structures that are easily spotted and yet sounds new and original. Their music is a mix of Mars Volta or Rush on the instrumentation side and ..Echolyn..on the writing and vocal side. And it really works. They never scream and warble like some of the Mars Volta, the vocals are really smooth and under control and with both brothers contributing they’re somereally neat harmonies and vocal tradeoffs. The ..Echolyn..tone really comes through on track two “Cool Smack” (6:00). Where they do remind me of Mars Volta is when they veer off into one of their raw segments. These guys are tight and they can go from soft acoustic segments into wall-of-sound crunchy punk-styled guitars. What won me over however is that The Tea Club is a progressive rock band and they freely admit that. Their compositions are structured intentionally with dramatic shifts in time and tempo. None of the nine tracks is overly long, in fact the longest is just 6:27 and yet each tune will be made up of a number of different elements. And while there is no keyboard, this is one of those bands where you don’t even miss it. Another great track is “Castle Builder”(4:38) that starts off softly with a clean guitar sound picking out a melody line and then proceeds to build in intensity. The next track “Purple Chukz” (4:45) starts off with an alt-prog guitar buzz and vocals delivered in off-kilter minor notes immediately setting the tone before the song shifts into a haunting acoustic guitar middle section accented by the bass and drums. There is some neat guitar interplay and then suddenly the piece picks of tempo and explodes into a short group-riff, before it all comes back to the opening themes but now the sound is dense with instrumentation. On the next track “Will o’ theWisp” (6:27) we’re back to an ..Echolyn.. style only made more aggressive in a distinctly Tea Club style. The band employ an ever changing tight staccato pattern musically in between the vocals, then two-and-a-half minutes into the song everything shifts to an atmospheric blues riff with a nice sixties psychedelic feel. This segment builds to crushing intensity before returning to the opening theme.

Listening to The Tea Club just confirms to me there is a lot talent out there. These guys are tight, sing really well and write some very interesting material. As a first recording General Winter’s Secret Museum is a major accomplishment, one they can be really proud of. They really deserve to be signed and heard by a wider audience. This is music that has huge cross-over potential and if you are a fan of the band’s mentioned or the descriptions above I’d recommend you seek out a copy of their CD today."