 MIGHTY
HIGH - … In Drug City (myspace.com/mightyhigh)
These Brooklyn mooks have been rockin’
the boroughs for 5 years now with their high-energy,
old-school, kick out the jams style of raunchy
rock ‘n’ roll. Given that every
song they do is about doing drugs, it’s
probably not surprising that they’re just
now releasing their first full-length. It’d
be easy enough to dismiss the band (who go by
stage names like Woody High, T.J. Whippets,
and Tommy Blow) as a one-joke novelty act if
not for the fact that these songs really do
rock, with a fuzzed-out pre-punk Stooges/MC5
adrenaline (or perhaps more accurately, amphetamine)
rush. Even if you don’t get high yourself,
rock and roll fans will find that Mighty High
will still blow your mind.
 IKE
REILLY – Poison The Hit Parade (Rock Ridge
Music)
I only discovered Ike Reilly on his fourth
full-length, 2007’s I Belong To The Staggering
Evening, a bravura collection of gritty bar-room
rockers that fused the baleful wit and streetcorner
poetry of Tom Waits with the blue-collar ethos
of the young Springsteen (if all of his E Street
crew were Irish hooligans,) all sung with the
pinch-nosed whine of the early Dylan. With the
momentum garnered by last year’s well-received
Staggering Evening, it’s a bit odd that
Reilly takes a “time out” of sorts
with this release, a collection of early demos,
digital-only singles, and alternate versions
of previously-released material. There are two
new songs here, though; the powerful indie-manifesto
title track and a tortured ballad about surviving
cancer called “Dragonflies.” I probably
wouldn’t recommend this as someone’s
first taste of Ike Reilly, but if you’re
already a fan, these alternate takes mixed with
new material should keep you sated until Reilly
gets around to recording a proper new full-length.
 MAX
LEVINE ENSEMBLE - OK Smarty Pants (Plan-It-X)
On their fourth (and long-awaited) full-length,
Washington DC’s Max Levine Ensemble (this
time a trio, and no, there’s no one named
Max Levine in the band) kick their (already impressive)
spiky, frenetic approach to pop/punk up another
notch. While there’s little here that’s
overtly political, the band – in its current
incarnation. David “Spoonboy” Combs
on guitar/vocals, Ben “Bepstein” Epstein
on bass, and Nick Popovici on drums – hammers
home fevered messages about the importance of
living in the moment and dealing with change.
Working from a model that seems more inspired
by the frantic from-the-heart punk of Berkeley’s
Gilman Street or the new breed of Columbus, OH
pop-punkers (as opposed to the artier and more
cerebral D.C. scene,) TMLE excels here with a
potent mixture of immediacy and freneticism. Spoonboy
spits out his vocals with the high-pitched, wiry
verve of the young Pete Shelley, backed by Nick’s
impeccably propulsive drumming. Exemplified by
the wordy but intriguingly titled “Aren’t
All Songs Political (Aren’t All Songs Vaguely
Self-Referential?),” the songs on OK Smarty
Pants range from blasts of free-associative poetry
(“firetoowweeerrr”) to concise (and
often surprisingly bitter) storytelling songs
that read like pages ripped from a lovesick schoolboy’s
perzine. Kudos also to Plan-It-X Records, which
has delivered an attractive and informative digi-pak
sleeve for this release (the label’s often
been a bit chintzy with packaging in the past.)
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