The latest offering from Louisville’s own The Fervor is serenely electric – there’s a charge of urgency that hides just below the calm surface. It’s beautiful, haunting, and a little bit stunning. Natalie Felkor’s vocals are earnest and sad and make you fall in love with her from the first note of the first word of the first song, the title track “Arise, Great Warrior”. Her voice is cold and heavy – like that empty side of the bed after a break-up. Her brutally honest lyrics can speak volumes with only a phrase…and sometimes with only a single word.
Besides Felkor’s voice and impassioned lyrics, its hard ignore her ferverant keyboard parts. The intro to “Let’s Get Loaded” sounds like such a brilliant callback to early 70’s Elton John, I can hardly stand it. And I’m going to venture to say now, that “Let’s Get Loaded” might be the best song you’re going to hear this year.
If Felkor is the heart and soul of this band, Mat Herron’s drum set is the whole goddamn body. The way each tap of every roll or tumble fills out the body of these arrangements proves that he is nothing less than a master, as well as a student, of his craft.
And the often somber band never sounded as playful as when they bounce their way through the first verse of “Crazy for the Feeling”. But be careful with the fun even when The Fervor sounds happy, heartbreak is right around the corner, when Natalie sings, “I’ve got hands that are colder than the thought that’s on your mind.”
In the end, the seven songs on “Arise, Great Warrior” show that these guys are every bit as good, if not better than the bands that are crowding the Louisville scene right now. And if this album doesn’t make you take notice, then nothing ever will.
