"Let it Rain" may be the most radio-able song I've heard this decade that isn't on it (yet?), for whatever reason. It has undoubtedly all the necessary components to win over the nation.

Off-the-cuff question for inquisitive music fans: Can a music reviewer take a concert off? Apparently not this one. Especially when said reviewer ends up seeing people laden with unbelievably untapped potential perform, and is driven to express appreciation.

It all started when I'd accepted a casual offer in late autumn 2003, to see The Fixx - speaking of talent most underrated - and, opening for them was Larisa Bryski. Larisa and company had constant stage energy in the live setting. Larisa's voice has depth and is resonance-ridden. The feeling she conveys while she carries out held-notes can emote bumps on your arm and send shivers through the hairs on your nape. I thought in the afters of the early late-evening that the playing bands would be accessible to at least field a question or two. Being on holiday at the time, I hadn't taken a notebook to the show. I've since learned: "Always have notebook." Any number of queries about Larisa Bryski (and her band?) were in order at the time, but alas, the band eluded once they'd taken off-stage.

"Violet," LB's cd, released last September, opens with "Butterflies," a straight-forward rocking drum and bassline that echoes energetic with an it's-Friday-just-off-work release and freedom. Remember Pat Benatar? That pure and versatile and classically trained voice? Eerily similar here, and I'm guessing LB's heard this compliment a time or two.

Check out "Stand Up," wherein the whole feel and flow of the song creates a "can't-help-but-sing-along" amid the crowd. It rolls, it stops, it develops and picks right back up, invoking lyric study and air guitar frenzy.

Carefully spread across the remainder of the playlist are solid rockers like "Stray", "Wasting Time" and "Fool Me" with a sprinkling of sweet and memorable ballads like "Hold On" and "Too Late to Get it Right". The Ballad "Hold On" offers an emotional and too-short guitar solo which is dangerously suspense-building. That solo teases with an eternal depthish sound along the monumental lines of David Gilmour and Billy Gibbons. "Too Late to Get it Right" is Larisa and her piano. With a virtuosic brilliance Larisa delivers a bittersweet, yet beautiful, solo piece.

Larisa Bryski could easily find themselves as a hundred thousand people's favorite band, and it baffles that such talent and potential aren't being provided for a mass market so hungry for good rock and roll. A little work with solidifying a signature stage presence and the freedom to release some personality-enforcing quirks and effusions, get 'em a solid booking across some several million ears and we have in LB another success story.

Once again, I'm reviewing a band that has all the capacity for stardom based on sheer talent and love for rock and roll, short only a Manager/PR go-getter to get 'em opening for stadium-fillers such as the classic Sheryl Crow and other true rockers. Then beyond this, who knows what could be. Get "Violet" today!

Reviewed by Carlo D'mitri, March 2004