Hard rock music has begun to wane in popularity recently with attention being lavished on the alternative scene. London’s Big Linda are quite clearly here to drag us all back to those regular time signatures that we used to love, when life was just that bit simpler. They’ve borrowed the buzzed-out blues of Led Zeppelin, the gigantic balls of The Who and the freaky strut of The Rolling Stones and they‘re on a mission.Star act is ‘Golden Girl’, a hell of a song with wailing lead guitar riffs and macho bass drums and cymbal crashes. Throw in the gutsy vocal of Rob Alder, huge enough to blast out any cobwebbed doubts, add a memorably anthemic chorus and you’ve got a stuck-on winner. There’s a metronomic rhythm about it that will surely get feet tapping and heads nodding up and down the country. ‘Windpower’ shows clearly how many influences Big Linda have absorbed. They employ echo effects, shocking guitars and rolling drums to add a wallowing six minutes of space rock to the album.‘Get It While You Can’ has hints of Pearl Jam and Thunder with a well-worn bass groove, meaty riffs and simple, yet effectively feisty vocals. Moving on into the earnest crooning of ‘Gone’ we find a smoothly shifting melody, rock-steady drumbeats and moments of true musical passion. Final track, ‘Just Passing’ is a slow and steady ballad with hushed, weakened vocals. It’s rather a limp-wristed finish and does nothing to remind us why we were careering round our room, windmilling our air guitar, just a moment earlier.It’s certainly hard to ignore something so diverse and yet so cleverly balanced. The band’s soul is firmly rooted in the classic rock establishment of the past but clearly they have half-an-eye on the fresh ideas that bands like Kings Of Leon and Jet have added to rock music in recent years. 78%Links Big Linda [myspace]