The Load (5/26/10)

May 26th, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

It’s that time again, when we call ‘em like we see ‘em from our ivory tower. For those without the advantage of an ivory tower, consider this your closest possible brush with greatness.

Save Your Breath -- Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy

Welsh pop-punkers Save Your Breath do pop-punk by the book, but they do it incredibly well. The galloping rhythms and chunky guitars on Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy take the Blink-182 approach to the genre with pretty good results -- the EP has recently been reissued with 2 bonus tracks, and the collected 8 songs show a band with the chops and polish to succeed, if not yet that one breakout track that gets everybody tearing their bedrooms apart. “Holy Shit! Fortune Teller, Miracle Fish” and “I Am The Ticket?!” come close, the former demolishing everything in sight with clean harmonies and arena-level force and the latter initially showcasing muted riffs that wouldn’t sound of place on an early Alkaline Trio record before exploding into the kind of free-for-all that Fall Out Boy were once the ultimate masters of. Save Your Breath won’t blow your mind, but you could do a lot worse for cheap, easy fun fuel -- this disc makes me want to guzzle Mountain Dew and buy a new hoodie from Hot Topic.

MySpace | Last.fm |

polarOPPOSITEbear -- p014r0pp05itb34r

polarOPPOSITEbear are giving away their new EP p014r0pp05it3b34r for free, which is a good enough reason to check it out. What you discover might surprise you: these Wichita weirdos traffic in the same shredded-throat hysterics as fellow Midwesterners Cursive, but they update the sound with spiky new-wave guitars that coat all the drama in a fine metallic sheen. p014r0pp05it3b34r has the sharp angles and brooding melodies of early-aughts post-punk outfits like Bloc Party and Maximo Park but everything is a little bit rougher. “Andy Get Your Eagle” is probably the best song here; it slinks in on just a bassline, with grungy guitar windmills and explosive electric percussion following for the chorus. But the other 3 tracks offer tight competition -- the best EPs beg to be expanded into full-length projects, and p014r0pp05it3b34r practically gets down its knees. I can’t wait to see what these guys do next, but for now this is a great little snack for your iPod; I recommend you throw it on either while jogging or doing lines at downmarket night clubs. It’s equally appropriate for both endeavors.

Official Site | MySpace | Last.fm |

Man The Change -- EP

Man the Change’s self-titled debut EP sounds like shit, which is a shame, because the 4 songs collected here are pretty good. The disc starts with sirens and chunky stop-start riffs, which is a decent way to kick off your record. Then the vocals come in, and they’re slightly problematic -- a little nasal and patchy, with occasional hardcore screams deployed with much vigor but little skill. The trouble evaporates right away, though, when the song drastically changes tempo and becomes almost something else entirely -- a trick that gets repeated a minute later, when the band lurches into a scuzzy ska groove. What the fuck are they doing? Do they know? I think so, and I give them some mad props for the way their songs switch directions and remain unpredictable even while locked tight inside the cage of pop-punk. The sound quality is somewhat distracting throughout, although the basslines are totally respectable -- these songs roll around with street-level aplomb. Find Man the Change a producer, pare the songs down (they don’t all have to go in every direction, necessarily), and you’ve got yourself something rad. Right now the band has something fairly cool. And “Murdoch” is something actually awesome -- at five minutes long, it towers like an epic, and the added scope, along with the band’s typical structural diversity, is enough to excuse any fidelity issues.

Official Site | MySpace |

Growns Ups -- More Songs

Grown Ups call Chicago part-time home (spending the rest of their days in Furnessvile, IN), and they’ve got the distinction of listing the legendary Matt Allison as their producer. (Mr. Allison has worked with two of Assault.it’s all-time favorite local groups, Alkaline Trio and Rise Against.) More Songs expands on the palette established by Grown Ups’ first release, 2009′s Songs -- ratcheting up the mathy guitar noodles and shout-along choruses. Those guitars in particular elevate Grown Ups’ racket -- this is punk rock for the thinking man, not lacking in muscle but more interested in posing musical questions than bulldozing the listener with power chords. Doyle Martin (also the singer) and Adam Sheets conspire to create melodic, tropical guitar interplay -- it’s like Abe Vigoda partying with The Broadways. (If Martin works on his delivery a little and gets the lyrics sharpened, we could switch out Jawbreaker for the Broadways.) More Songs is consistently intense, never more so than on “Pears,” the album’s highlight. “I tried to make a difference,” Martin wails as the music descends into first-rate chaos, and anyone who can’t (or refuses to) empathize should probably listen to 30 Seconds To Mars instead. Peaks are many, but the disc is best experienced in easily digestible chunks -- I recommend a few songs at a time, as these guys run into some of the same problems their forebears did: too little variety in the sound, too few honest-to-blog hooks that you can really hang your attention on. These guys display remarkable focus and skill, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend more time on the “pop” part of this equation. “Surprise Party,” along with “Pears,” comes closest to striking a perfect balance, and this is overall extremely solid.

MySpace |

Animal Names -- Oh Yes You Better Do

Released in 2009, this EP has regretfully only now come to our attention (mostly as a result of the band’s recently-released full-length Let It Been, which is even more awesome). Super-regretfully, as it turns out -- Animal Names have since disbanded. But that’s no reason not to investigate their oeuvre now. Oh Yes You Better Do features the kind of melodies that regularly power alt-country albums, but the band digs deep into them (accenting their guitar jangle with plentiful organ and eccentric instrumentation) and pushes them into psych-pop territory. They’re also not afraid to get a little serious -- the downbeat acoustic number “Octavius Statue In Sneakers” is so gentle and sweet that it makes the pumped-up bangers around it (“Hyphy Hyphy Hawaii” and “Crunk Crunk Croatia”) seem almost crass by comparison. The group’s approach is good-natured through-and-through, though -- these are some super polite Canadians, and even their most spastic moments contain enough rustic charm to make the whole package irresistibly pleasant. “Guy In The Ground Near The Marsh” is the disc’s most distinguished moment, capturing every facet of the band’s persona -- with its peppy melodies, wide-eyed innocence, and blissfully spaced-out focus on texture and dynamic, it could be a Terror Twilight-era Pavement outtake. But the single best moment occurs about two minutes into “My Friends For Mayor,” as what sounds like a kazoo starts humming and breaks up the song’s tender melancholy -- it’s the kind of light, perfect touch that is gonna make you miss Animal Names for quite awhile.