ALISTAIR CHRISTL
By Bryan Borzykowski
Elvis Presley is long gone, but the ramblin’ rock he helped popularize is alive and kicking. Alistair Christl is the latest guitar slinger to tackle old-school, Chet Atkins-approved rockabilly, and for the most part he succeeds in channelling the fast-fingered songwriters of old.
There are plenty of standouts here – the disc opener and title track is a blazing, distortion-filled rock song, while Love Don’t Add Up is sweet, lush and Randy Travis-like. His originals could one day be Canadian staples, but by covering Chuck Berry’s Maybelline and Hank Williams’s Ramblin Man, he shows he’s not afraid to pay homage to the past.