When I got this CD for review from Brian here at Rockeyez I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I had never heard of the band TRACY STARR before but the packaging just had a look like it might be something that could be kind of cool. So when I popped it into my CD player I was somewhat pleasantly surprised at what I heard.

TRACY STARR has a hard driving modern rock sound with some nice blues-based touches thrown in. The first thing that came to my mind upon initial listen to this record was that these guys have a modern-day TESLA sound going on. In fact, singer Steve DeYoung has bit of a Jeff Keith (TESLA) sounding vocal style also.

There are some good songs on offer here but the album does sound a little repetitive at times. Opening track “Yellow Rose” and others like “Ride” and “Sticks and Stones” all have a similar hard-driving rock sound to me.

Some of the more standout tracks to me are ones like “Backwoods Shuffle” which is a bluesy groove rocker and “Step Right Up” which has a balls-to-the-wall chorus while “401” is a great little acoustic instrumental number that is a nice change of pace.

“Chemical Sunshine” is a cool track with its nice guitar work courtesy of Steve LeBlanc and “Make Believe” is a great ballad and one of the stronger tracks on the record. The album ends with “Gonzalez” which clocks in at over 7 minutes and is a pretty good (if not a bit grungy sounding) track and features a nice extended “jam” section in the middle.

One thing that should also be mentioned is that the production on this CD is solid. So I’d say if you’re into straight ahead hard driving blues-based rock then you may want to look into this band.

From what I see on the bands website the album has been recently released in Canada so even though it’s been around since 2005 it may yet have a new lease on life!