Shin
Jin Rui – Zutiqua (Ex Libris Records)
This CD is a sixteen song anomaly as the
vocals remain almost entirely the same (very
much in the vein of late 70’s punk –
think Eugene Reynolds of the Rezillos) throughout,
which is delightful, but the music morphs
from straight up 70’s punk, to weird
goth-y sad-sack tunes, to completely hammered-while-writing-it
sounding acoustic rock. It’s been called
surfer punk and ‘cool as fuck’
by other media outlets, and sure, the acoustically
painful “Kill Your Heart” IS cool
as fuck, and there are some hints of surfer
style on here, it’s more just a punk
record with a guy who either arrived 25 years
too late, or couldn’t find a band to
front that would fit his style just right.
– Andrew Fersch
Tim
Lee Three – good2b3 (the paisley pop
label)
With 24 albums under his belt, Tim Lee convinced
his wife to join him and drummer Rodney Cash
to help him make number 25, and boy did it
sort of pay off. After fronting the Windbreakers
and doing a whole bunch of collaborations
with folks who are IN big bands (not necessarily
the big names though), seems like Tim just
wanted a little more freedom to make an album
of music that sounds just like the house band
in a small Midwestern town’s most popular
dive bar. Sure, maybe that’s your bag,
get home from working at ___________ (insert
soul crushing job here) and once you get the
__________ (significant other) off your back,
you call up the ________ (friends) and mosey
on over to Joe’s where bluesy rock local
heroes the Tim Lee 3 are playing. A voice
very mildly reminiscent of Mick Jagger, guitars
mildly reminiscent of Skynrd or Tom Petty,
back up vocals mildly reminiscent of high
school chorus, this album is loaded to the
brim with average rock and roll. If that’s
your bag, they do a hell of a job at it, keeping
it plain and simple, in both music and lyrics.
As Tim Lee even says, “Don’t like
it dumb, but I don’t like it too smart.”
– Andrew Fersch
(Damn) This Desert Air – EP 1 (Engineer)
For a band that immediately wants you to
know their influences are Cave In and Failure,
they shouldn’t sound so much like early-Tool
mixed with Any-Band from current rock radio.
Singer Craig Cirinelli is tailor made for
rock and roll stardom. The masses would happily
listen to his whisper / drone as they have
done for countless rock bands in the recent
past. His band deserves a good amount of credit
for managing to make his voice almost seem
tolerable (although what it’s really
lacking is originality). Some creative drumming
on “This Landslide” with a guitar
that very well could be Tool or Soundgarden
back in the day make the song quite listenable,
and even though Cirinelli was born to front
a radio play getting band, it might be that
it wasn’t this one. The four song EP
shows tremendous potential and if their only
goal was to be put on the radio, I would be
shocked if this didn’t get them one
step closer to that dream. – Andrew
Fersch
Ride
the Boogie – (Longhair Illuminati)
Do not judge a book by its cover, cause then
you are gonna miss shit like this. Ride The
Boogie may be the lamest name for a band ever
(of course, the exception is ska bands with
ska in the title, ie. Cobra Skamander, Skarotum,
etc), and yet they have an album that rocks
equally as it does entertain. Starting from
the first catchy notes of the Beatles-esque
“Hop Along Chastity”, RTB knows
that you need more than music to make a great
song, although, even if you took the vocals
out and just had a few understated instruments
with their hand-clapping it would probably
still be pretty awesome. It then morphs into
straight up rock and roll ala White Stripes
or Royal Trux with “Big Ass Bass”
and “Naughty Corner”. The album
moves back and forth from this sort of rock
to acoustic beauties like “Mustache
Riders”. Although it’s hard to
take someone seriously who belts out; “The
night was young and time was on our side/The
girls were jamming with their legs swinging
wide/And just as I thought I’d have
to swallow some pride/We had a crew of two
for a midnight ride”, it’s equally
hard not to fall in love with them for being
hilarious. Then the foursome follows it up
with a Supersuckers sounding “Mexico”
without ganking any style, it’s original
and it’s as rock and roll as anything
can be. Anti-cat songs, killing cold-hearted
businessmen, and a girl named Lousie “slurpin’
and blurpin’, chewin’ and chirpin’”,
what doesn’t this album have? That’s
not a rhetorical question, the answer is nothing.
– Andrew Fersch
CD
Reviews by Andrew Fersch
