The Load (5/12/10)

May 12th, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

Your weekly buffet of independent rock ‘n’ roll reviews -- consider this Golden Corral for rock nerds.

The Everyday Motive -- EP

With a press release boasting influences as diverse as Foo Fighters and Silverchair, it’s pretty easy to anticipate what the Everyday Motive are pushing on their self-titled debut EP -- generic, glossy riff-rock. The band produces impressive facsimiles of numerous ’90s alt-rock strains but struggle to create something unique. The flat singing and weak self-help lyrics don’t add much. The record benefits from a certain baseline level of competency, and it sounds slick enough. But the songs just aren’t there, and the drama never pops -- music following a formula this strictly should at least reach out and punch you in the mouth, but the tracks here just kind of curl up in the fetal position and lay there.

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Stegosaur -- Adventure

Stegosaur, on the other hand, are almost all inspiration -- it’s spraying everywhere on these rambunctious tunes. These are real pop songs that really go places, and Adventure is the kind of iTunes impulse buy that turns into your favorite thing for weeks on end. “Big Breath,” this 7″s centerpiece, is the kind of song that bands stake their reputation on, and these guys seem like they’re barely trying. The other two tracks are pretty great shakes, too -- “A Headache” displays goofy, gratifying self-awareness, and “Bloooooood” stretches out for a relatively expansive four minutes, providing Adventure with some welcome heft. Stegosaur mix familiar elements together to create their own thing, which is (sort of) the point of making music. Adventure is a flawless victory.

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Pianos Become The Teeth -- Old Pride

Pianos Become The Teeth tear shit up on Old Pride, an awesomely volatile eight-song collection. The band’s palette basically consists of “gauzy soft parts” and “throat-shredding chaos,” but they easily sustain interest for the disc’s thirty-six minute duration. The band is pretty unashamedly a “screamo” outfit, but they don’t bother with most of the baggage attached to that label. For instance: the vocals are delivered straight-up, daring to revel in ugliness and pain. With most bands in this genre vainly attempting to out-Geddy Geddy Lee, it’s cool to just hear some good, raw screaming. The music gets surprisingly gentle when it needs to, and the whole package is glued up with fierce “we’re gonna blast the fake wood-paneling off these walls” passion -- it sounds like a bunch of dudes creating radical noise, which is what Old Pride is, which makes it a success.

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Lighten Up -- Absolutely Not

Seventeen minutes is how long it takes Lighten up to blast through twelve songs. Obviously, subtlety is not their most prized commodity -- that would be attitude, which these guys have in spades. This is real, not-fucking-around hardcore, but the neat twist is that these guys are so non-threatening (some actual song titles: “Boyz II Wolves,” “Butt-Speak,” “Dolphins Are Sharks With A Good Publicist”) that the whole thing seems like a good-natured josh, like your best friend (comically) hitting you in the face with a brick. There’s not too much melody to speak of, so Lighten Up have room to grow (anybody who doubts the role of bubblegum in hardcore needs to spend more time with their Misfits records), but Absolutely Not is an engaging platter of balls-out craziness just the same. You’ll like it, if you like this kind of stuff.

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