You can hear the busker in him still, and that’s precisely the point. There’s a rawness at the centre of this track that no amount of studio polish has been allowed to sand down \u2014 the sound of somebody who learned to command a crowd without a stage, a soundcheck, or so much as a plug socket. What’s changed is the scale of the ambition wrapped around that raw nerve. Where his earlier work was one man doing the work of five, “Honky Tonk” sounds like that same man has now been handed the keys to the whole carnival, and he’s driving it straight through a swamp at midnight with the headlights off.<\/p>
The track opens lean and mean, all delta-blues sinew, before a riff arrives that does that very particular thing great psych-rock riffs do \u2014 it doesn’t so much play as circle, swirling around the vocal like it’s stalking it, thickening every time it comes back round. It’s a neat trick, borrowed from the best of 1970s psychedelia but never merely nostalgic; there’s too much grit under the fingernails for this to be pastiche. Then, just when you think you’ve got the measure of the thing, it drops \u2014 genuinely drops \u2014 into a bridge that sounds like the song has waded out into black water and lost its footing. It’s swampy, it’s haunting, and it holds its nerve for just long enough before hauling itself back out for one last, cathartic chorus. That structural sleight of hand \u2014 tension, submersion, release \u2014 is the mark of a songwriter who’s stopped thinking about songs as verses and choruses and started thinking about them as journeys.<\/p>
The video matches the ambition beat for beat. It never settles for illustrating the lyrics; instead it leans into the same theatrical, rotating-cast chaos that’s become Cam’s live trademark, all wild props and travelling-carnival energy, so that watching it feels less like observing a music video and more like being handed a ticket and shoved through the tent flap. It’s tactile, unruly, and shot through with the sense of a man who genuinely cannot help but perform, even for a camera.<\/span><\/p> If this is the first flare sent up ahead of Lost In Creation, it’s a supremely confident one. “Get Up Ya Honky Tonk” doesn’t just show the bluesy, psychedelic corner of the record \u2014 it makes a compelling case that Cam Cole has found a way to expand without losing an ounce of the ferocity that got him noticed in the first place. Get up indeed. This one demands it.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/camcole.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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