Nice (Rollins Band album)

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Nice
Studio album by
Rollins Band
ReleasedAugust 21, 2001
Recorded2000–2001
StudioCherokee (Hollywood)
GenreRock
Length44:56
LabelSanctuary
ProducerHenry Rollins
Rollins Band chronology
Get Some Go Again
(2000) 		Nice
(2001) 		A Nicer Shade of Red
(2002)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[2]
Pitchfork Media3.0/10[3]
Spin4/10[4]
Sputnikmusic2/5[5]

Nice is a studio album by the American rock band Rollins Band, released in 2001.[6][7] It was their first album released on Sanctuary Records.[8] It was the Rollins Band's final studio album.

The band line-up was Henry Rollins fronting the blues rock band Mother Superior, whilst retaining the Rollins Band name.[9][10]

Production[edit]

During the making of the album, Rollins was often flying in and out of Vancouver, Canada to record parts for Fox's horror anthology show Night Visions, which he hosted.[11] In a 2001 interview, Rollins reflected on the recording process for Nice, saying it was made in "[a] very simple fashion. Analog two-inch tape, real instruments, cut live, no drum beats fixed, no vocals pitched, just music played hard, good sounds going onto tape, very few takes." Rollins further added, "our road manager Mike Curtis, a guitar and tone aficionado, set us up with several amp, cabinet, and pedal options he constructed with gear he rented from L.A.'s Black Market vintage gear store. We got some great guitar sounds this time around."[12] For the album, Rollins decided to hire songwriters Dianne Warren and Desmond Child to help him compose some of the music, since he and his bandmates were a fan of the work they did with Bon Jovi and Aerosmith.[13]

Critical reception[edit]

In October 2001, Spin deemed the album "lukewarm metal oatmeal with funk raisins."[4] The Cleveland Scene called it "looser, calmer, and more varied in its sonic attack."[14] The Hartford Courant wrote that "songs occasionally drift off into quiet blues-guitar passages, but they're inevitably interrupted by Rollins' brutish bellow, which often feels out of place."[15] In February 2002, Pitchfork's Dominique Leone gave the album a negative review, awarding it only a 3 out of 10. He wrote, "Henry Rollins' latest release, Nice, is utterly irrelevant in the context of almost every other album reviewed at Pitchfork. It's too macho to be indie, too rock to be punk, too 'in your face, to tha X-treme' to be current, too Guitar Center to be Amoeba. It is certainly too Rollins to be subtle or multi-dimensional."[3]

In November 2001, Dylan P. Gadino of CMJ New Music Monthly compared the album to Thin Lizzy, Clutch and Black Sabbath, also giving it a negative review, He wrote, "at 40, one-time hardcore visionary Henry Rollins is a movie actor, host of Fox's anthology series Night Visions, an established spoken-word artist, an author and a poet. In the midst of all this multimedia action, he has continued to pump out Rollins Band discs, mostly with limited success. Nice is yet another mediocre Rollins album in a string of them." He went on to describe its sound as "blues-metal", and noted that it "avoids aging punk-cliches and nu metal conceits."[16] A more positive review came from AllMusic's Chris True, who awarded it four out of five stars, writing "while Get Some Go Again had a lot of great songs, and the music of Mother Superior is just what Rollins needed, he never seemed to gel with the band on that album. Here, however, it sounds like Jim Mackenroth, Jim Wilson, and Marcus Blake had ideas of their own, and went for them 100 percent." True added that, "it may be shocking to hear female vocals or a horn section coming out from behind Rollins, but here it works splendidly."[1]

Legacy[edit]

Louder Sound ranked it as the worst Rollins Band album in 2022.[17]

Track listing[edit]

  1. "One Shot" – 3:03
  2. "Up for It" – 4:39
  3. "Gone Inside the Zero" – 2:39
  4. "Hello" – 3:04
  5. "What's the Matter Man" – 2:58
  6. "Your Number Is One" – 4:27
  7. "Stop Look and Listen" – 1:48
  8. "I Want So Much More" – 3:42
  9. "Hangin' Around" – 5:25
  10. "Going Out Strange" – 4:51
  11. "We Walk Alone" – 3:59
  12. "Let That Devil Out" – 4:21

Bonus tracks

  2. "Nowhere to Go but Inside" – 3:02
  3. "Too Much Rock and Roll" – 3:49

Australian edition

  2. "Soul Implant" – 4:57
  3. "Marcus Has Evil in Him – 4:00

Personnel[edit]

Rollins Band

  • Henry Rollins – vocals
  • Jim Wilson – guitar
  • Marcus Blake – bass guitar
  • Jason Mackenroth – drums, saxophone

with:

  • Clif Norrell – trumpet
  • Jackie Simley-Stevens, Valerie Pinkston, Maxayn Lewis, Sueann Carwell, Tyler Collins – backing vocals on "Up for It" and "I Want So Much More"

Technical

Charts[edit]

Chart performance for Nice
Chart (2001) Peak
position
Australian Albums (ARIA)[18] 64
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[19] 56

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Nice - Rollins Band, Henry Rollins | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic.
  2. ^ Larkin, Colin (2006). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Vol. 7. MUZE. p. 122.
  3. ^ a b Leone, Dominique (February 10, 2002). "Rollins Band: Nice". Pitchfork. Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  4. ^ a b "Reviews". SPIN. SPIN Media LLC. October 5, 2001 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ "Review: Rollins Band - Nice | Sputnikmusic". sputnikmusic.com.
  6. ^ "Rollins Band Inks With Sanctuary". Billboard. June 13, 2001.
  7. ^ "Rollins Band A Million Miles Away From Creed, 'Artistic Flop' Britney Spears". MTV News.
  8. ^ Augusto, Troy J. (September 4, 2001). "Rollins Band". Variety.
  9. ^ "Rollins Band Nice". exclaim.ca.
  10. ^ "Henry Rollins, All the Rage" – via washingtonpost.com.
  11. ^ "Come In and Burn > > > An Unofficial Henry Rollins & Rollins Band Website". www.comeinandburn.com.
  12. ^ https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.henry-rollins/c/ShD8PjP2A3I/m/JR9-alscS8oJ
  13. ^ angelfire.com:80/super/agent71/rollins1.html Interview With Rollins June 2001
  14. ^ Harvilla, Rob. "Rollins Gets Nice". Cleveland Scene.
  15. ^ Courant, Hartford. "NEW ON DISC". courant.com.
  16. ^ "Reviews". CMJ New Music Monthly: 88. November–December 2001.
  17. ^ Simon Young (May 18, 2022). "Every Rollins Band album ranked from worst to best". loudersound.
  18. ^ Ryan, Gavin (2011). Australia's Music Charts 1988–2010 (PDF ed.). Mt Martha, Victoria, Australia: Moonlight Publishing. p. 238.
  19. ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Rollins Band – Nice" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved September 12, 2022.

External links[edit]


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