Why does seemingly every pop-punk band feel the need to execute their message via two singers? Take Man Overboard, for example: their album Real Talk would be twice as good if they dialed down the nasally guy and just let the other dude sing everything. It’s not like what they’re saying is complicated -- these twelve songs about girls are boilerplate emo, going so deep on “Montrose” that they’re suddenly singing about stuffed animals. (No joke.) I don’t have beef with Man Overboard, necessarily. They’re quite good at what they do, and Real Talk earns them a place at the table with Philadelphia wunderkinds The Wonder Years. But they’ll need to make some changes if they want to involve listeners beyond their target demographic of skinny guys with broken hearts.

Skinny guys with broken hearts, though, will absolutely eat this album up. The heartbreak here isn’t real, and the insight remains of the decidedly non-crushing variety. “You could say one of two things,” the album begins. “Call me sometime or let’s hang out / Or maybe I could help you out / Stop acting like I’ll never see you again, and like I don’t have you figured out.” Well, here’s two things: the beefy guitars and double-time rhythms that propel the song are a wonder of modern musical science, and, if these guys had any girl figured out this album wouldn’t exist. But God bless young men in tight pants; Real Talk reminds me of many lonely nights spent with a six-pack attempting to suss out the mysteries of the fairer sex. Man Overboard might just make you nostalgic for the sweet pang of getting dumped.

But if you happen to be, for example, a grown woman, there’s nothing here for you. Which is eventually my main complaint with virtually all of the pop-punk in the last decade or so: the music is ostensibly about girls, but I don’t see any girls actually around. None are listed in the album credits as having contributed in any way to Real Talk, which is especially mystifying when you hear the gleeful faux-Weezer bounce of “FM Dial Style” and realize how perfect an opportunity it would’ve been for one of these guys to duet with a female singer, instead of just trading affectless lines with another bro. Indeed, for all their sensitivity, the guys in Man Overboard kinda seem like knuckleheads -- like maybe they spent too much time listening to Dashboard Confessional songs and now they don’t, themselves, have anything to confess.

I feel like I’m ragging on these guys something fierce, which is not my ultimate intention. If Real Talk is bloodless, it’s also harmless, and this should do very well with people who already like this kind of thing. But will Man Overboard convert anyone? They might be able to pick up a few new prepubescent listeners if they spin this enough at the local Claire’s, but I would sooner admit to enjoying a Katy Perry song than tell any of my friends that I’m going to a Man Overboard show. And that’s not actually a slight on this band; it’s just that I realize there are other things in life besides girls at this point, and when am I feeling emotionally vulnerable enough to necessitate a record like this, I’d just as soon stick with my battered copy of Alkaline Trio’s Goddamnit. I mean, those guys at least had a little variety -- they sang about girls and beer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ol5xKrX6d0

Man Overboard:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

Not really, but this is pretty cool: Broken Rim Records just released I Call Fives‘ Bad Advice on super-limited vinyl. So technically, if you don’t act quickly, these records will be history. But don’t take my word for it – read what I had to say about Bad Advice when it was released digitally:

The mildly-addictive pop-punk on I Call Fives’ new digital EP Bad Advice is kind of like Dairy Queen’s soft-serve ice cream — it’s sweet, but not decadent, and delivers exactly the right amount of gratifcation without spilling into overindulgence. If you like The Wonder Years or Set Your Goals, this’ll be right up your alley, and even moreso if you regularly update your tumblr with particularly trenchant lyrics from your favorite bands. This is mall punk at its shiniest and most compressed; if you welded a bunch of power chords together, melted them down into a silver bullet, and shot it into your ear, that’s kind of what I Call Fives is like. (This presupposes that you have technology that can transform sound waves into metal; simile does not apply for all listeners.) They have some cool tricks, too — the way they layer a few voices together into an overlapping round on “Two Days Or A Lifetime Of Failure” is a nice substitution for the typical double-kick throat-buster breakdown that most bands would’ve gone with. I’d object to the set-closing ballad “Take The Fall” simply on the grounds of unearned wussiness, but it breaks into warp speed at the end for a nice little cherry on this low-cal sundae. I Call Fives basically sound like any other pop-punk band, and they need to find their own twist on the genre before they can create something truly compelling, but I could still listen to this stuff all day. It’s the pleasure principle, man.

See? Shit is tight. You can order Bad Advice by clicking this link right here. It’s $13 well-spent!

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, Adams and Eves, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

Throughout rock ‘n’ roll history there have been bands named after places. You’ve got your Boston, your Kansas, your Asia. You know what you don’t see, though? Band names like The Boston, The Kansas or The Asia. Why? Because that would be pretty fucking presumptuous. Well, that’s where The Maine comes in. Not only does their band name flip the bird to our country’s 23rd state, it is made even more insulting by the fact that they are actually from Arizona. Arizona! I’m fairly certain there isn’t a state in the Union less like Maine than Arizona.

Oh, and also: they suck. Their music is the sort of turgid bullshit one finds while listening to ear-raping Clear Channel radio stations that have names like The Rock 105 FM or Modern Rock WKRM. It’s bland, corporate pop-punk that could only have been conceived in a board room by a bunch of old white guys asking themselves, “What do the young, hip kids like to ‘rock out’ to these days?” I guarantee that at least one of their songs will eventually be used during a training sequence in a feel-good movie about a destitute, paraplegic orphan with mild autism who overcomes the odds to become football’s greatest hero.

The protagonist of the provocatively-titled “Inside of You” is not paraplegic, but he certainly has other obstacles to overcome. For instance: he appears to be in some sort of pedophile Gomorrah, populated by a leering old man and a roving band of hedonistic fetishists. The video begins in black and white with the young boy weathering the inappropriate touching of the aforementioned old man while sitting on the front stoop of his house. He then wanders around a group of adults, desperate to tell them about the terrifying encounter he just had, but they are all either deaf to his pleas or eager to engage in inappropriate touching of their own. Yearning for escape, he gazes out his window through a kaleidoscopic spyglass made out of a couple toilet paper rolls (such is his poverty), hoping to find a better place. Instead, he witnesses a wild orgy orchestrated by the members of The Maine dressed like escapees from Stanley Kubrick’s nightmares.

The lead singer, John O’Callaghan, sings “I can’t get inside of you,” and in the context of what’s going on in the video, it comes off like the desperate plea of a drunken pederast. Well, I assume the drunkenness on account of his Irish surname. He does this while dressed in an outfit that looks like something the Mad Hatter would have worn had he gone to an all-boys Catholic school as a child. This is not a man I would let my own child anywhere near, but some parents do awful things to advance their child’s acting career.

At the end of the video, the toilet paper roll kaleidoscope breaks and the young boy is heartbroken. Now that he has seen the lascivious pleasures that await him in adulthood, how can he return to the hum-drum world of his current existence? There is a glimmer of hope, though, when some of the evil magic held captive by this device escapes, and the boy is confronted with a now-colorized girl offering him… what is that, a scrotum? Upon first viewing I thought it was an apple, like some sort of Adam and Eve shit. Now I don’t know what it is. And really, that sums up this video as a whole: I don’t know what it is, but it vaguely resembles a scrotum.

Welcome back to the Load, where we cast our eye towards the latest and greatest in independent rock ‘n’ roll. Now available in capsule form:

I Call Fives -- Bad Advice

The mildly-addictive pop-punk on I Call Fives’ new digital EP Bad Advice is kind of like Dairy Queen’s soft-serve ice cream -- it’s sweet, but not decadent, and delivers exactly the right amount of gratifcation without spilling into overindulgence. If you like The Wonder Years or Set Your Goals, this’ll be right up your alley, and even moreso if you regularly update your tumblr with particularly trenchant lyrics from your favorite bands. This is mall punk at its shiniest and most compressed; if you welded a bunch of power chords together, melted them down into a silver bullet, and shot it into your ear, that’s kind of what I Call Fives is like. (This presupposes that you have technology that can transform sound waves into metal; simile does not apply for all listeners.) They have some cool tricks, too -- the way they layer a few voices together into an overlapping round on “Two Days Or A Lifetime Of Failure” is a nice substitution for the typical double-kick throat-buster breakdown that most bands would’ve gone with. I’d object to the set-closing ballad “Take The Fall” simply on the grounds of unearned wussiness, but it breaks into warp speed at the end for a nice little cherry on this low-cal sundae. I Call Fives basically sound like any other pop-punk band, and they need to find their own twist on the genre before they can create something truly compelling, but I could still listen to this stuff all day. It’s the pleasure principle, man.

MySpace |  Last.fm |  Facebook

The Viaducts -- EP

I recently caught the Viaducts live at darkroom, and their unique take on classic power-pop compelled me to drop $3 on this self-released EP. The ‘Ducts, as I call ‘em, have a true independent spirit -- this is music that acts like other music doesn’t even exist. Their big hit (judging from the drunk dude who kept yelling for it at the show I attended) is “Drive-Thru Girl,” which is pretty much the same thing as Bruce Springsteen’s idiotic “Queen Of The Supermarket,” if you stripped off the studio gloss and slowed it down (and somehow made it more idiotic). I prefer “Tell Me Sister,” which is, I think, a pretty sincere request of the singer’s sister, imploring her to tell him why she’s so sad. Speaking of the singer, his name is Jimmy Rane and the EP’s credits make sure to let you know that he wrote all of the songs included here, so he obviously takes himself pretty seriously as a songwriter. He shouldn’t -- this is about as basic and bare-bones as you can get, especially since the guitar is mixed so low that you can only hear it during the solos - but I find it pretty cool that he does anyway. When I was twelve I received the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack as part of a wildly off-kilter trade with Cory Tendering, and my first thought upon hearing the Viaducts was “These guys should’ve been on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack.” You can take that however you want to; the Viaducts are gonna take their schtick straight to the bank. Could this be a contender for album of the year? No. But it’s the most fun I’ve had for $3 since I bought a handjob from Robert Downey Jr in 2002.

Official Site |  MySpace |  Facebook

Balance and Composure / Tigers Jaw -- Split

Balance and Composure is an odd name for a band so totally committed to losing their shit at such regular intervals. The first four songs of this split are theirs, and, were I in charge of such things,  I might’ve flipped that around -- Tigers Jaw (hailing, I kid you not, from Scranton, PA) are more tuneful and reserved, with better potentional for easing casual listeners into the balls-out maelstrom that B&C set loose. Balance and Composure (also from Pennsylvania, although not anywhere funny) do the real tight-wire stuff here -- their songs are long, complex, and hard, with plenty of pummeling riffs and explosive tempo changes. The band is great at the sharp, angular stuff that gets all the math nerds fondling their calculators, but they don’t neglect the sensitive, thoughtful side of their persona -- they’re all over the spectrum. Chaos is always exciting, but especially when it’s executed with  this much verve and precision. Tigers Jaw are less exciting but more consistent and listenable; they throw some moody keyboards into the mix, giving their music a softer, more inviting feel. They also kind of sound like Brand New. Overall this split is exactly what you need if you aren’t feeling angsty enough today; listening to this for a few hours got me firmly back into my old awkward teenage headspace, and that’s actually a pretty cool place to visit. I am totally surprised by how much I enjoy this record. Road trip to Pennsylvania, anyone?

Balance and Composure: MySpace |  Last.fm |  Facebook
Tigers Jaw: MySpace |  Last.fm |  Tumblr

How To Destroy Angels -- EP

How To Destroy Angels (or, as I call them, Trent Reznor’s Crystal Castles) have shrouded themselves in mystery so far, offering only vague info about the makeup of the group and some pretty weird videos on their Vimeo channel. But now we have this whole EP, full of industrial squelches and blips and bloops, and I must say: this is the best thing Reznor’s had his name on since The Fragile. It further explores his recent ambient-leaning tendencies while also making time for some dance-ready beats. Vocals are supplied by Reznor’s wife, former-West Indian Girl singer Mariqueen Maandig, who has a pleasing if somewhat affectless voice. Her pipes are best put to use by “A Drowning,” which sounds like M83 getting gently roughed up and wouldn’t feel out of place on the Lost Boys 3 soundtrack. Where the disc  falters a little is on the clubbier stuff -- “BBB” and “Fur Lined” are marvels of tech-geek compositional flair and they move with a sleek, streamlined economy that Nine Inch Nails, as tied to total sensory overload as that band/concept was, never quite managed, but Maandig lacks the personality to really push them through the speaker. Hardcore Trent-heads should enjoy “The Space In Between” and “Parasite” for the way they polish up and advance ideas Reznor first started exploring in the late 90s -- the dirty, heavy, impressionistic stuff that’s become his bread-and-butter since shunning the commerical spotlight for the sterile confines of his studio. This EP covers basically all the bases you could ask it to, and ends just before the group’s kinda limited aesthetic can grow tiresome. I’m psyched for the eventual full-length, but I hope they discover some new colors in their palette before then.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWbfgGDl6XE

Official Site |  MySpace |  Vimeo

The Webelos -- Model Citizen

I am, generally, not a huge power-pop guy. Wasn’t always that way; I used to blast Michael Penn’s first record at full volume all day long. But somewhere along the way, I lost my taste for the genre. It all flooded back, though, when I popped in Model Citizen, the debut EP from Chicago’s own The Webelos. Billing themselves as “America’s #1 scout-rock band” and adopting a genially dorky aesthetic (the CD looks like it’s some kind of interactive learning game from 1993), The Webelos definitely stand out -- there’s a refreshing innocence to their music that speaks to the eight-year-old boy inside me. But the hooks are straight-up adult: imagine if Fountains of Wayne copped their moves from Trust-era Elvis Costello and didn’t bother with all the jokes. The surging guitar riff that anchors ”Peace For The Wicked” pretty much steals the show by virtue of its overpowering melodic aggression, but you’ll find plenty to love on the other five tracks. “Oh Miki” is a welcome country excursion, complete with some sweet pedal steel, and “Lucky Roll” captures the essence of ’90s Costello without succumbing to arrangement overkill. Model Citizen is a fine entry in a long and proud pop tradition, and something genuinely interesting from our hometown. Is there a merit badge for fun?

Official Site |  MySpace |  Twitter

Big news for fans of the Wonder Years: the band has signed to Hopeless Records, leaving behind the warm confines of No Sleep. I’m a big Wonder Years booster, but also a general fan of No Sleep, so I’m a little conflicted about this news. Or, at least, I was, until I read this statement from label-head (and all around genial dude) Chris Hansen (via the Hopeless blog):

“The Wonder Years and No Sleep have been together for basically almost both of our lifetimes, and I couldn’t be happier or prouder of how far they have come and with their move to Hopeless Records. Support these guys always, some of the best dudes and my best friends.”

So that’s settled -- we’ll just keep on showing the love that we feel in our hearts. I knew this story would have a happy ending! (For the record, we are also general fans of Hopeless -- please don’t touch our old Avenged Sevenfold and Thrice CDs, people. WE NEED THAT SHIT TO BREATHE!) Anyways, there’s nothing about a new Wonder Years disc yet, but the band is in the midst of an extensive tour that should see them playing somewhere near you in the future. We’ve posted the dates below, right after this amusing video that helps explain the band’s decision to sign to Hopeless. It also involves pancakes. (And if for some reason you still haven’t grabbed a copy of The Upsides, do it here.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm-vwMiA_ww

DATES:

[UK/Europe Tour]

5/27/2010 Manchester, UK – Retro Bar [w/ All Or Nothing]

5/28/2010 Camden, UK – The Purple Turtle

5/29/2010 Hatfield, UK – Uni of Herts [Slam Dunk Fest]

5/30/2010 Leeds, UK – Leeds University [Slam Dunk Fest]

[UK/Europe Tour w/ Four Year Strong, Fireworks]

6/01/2010 Wolverhampton, UK – Slade Rooms

6/02/2010 Liverpool, UK – Academy 2

6/03/2010 London, UK – Islington Academy

6/06/2010 Cologne, Germany – Underground

6/07/2010 Paris, France – La Boule Noire

6/08/2010 Frankfurt, Germany – Nachtleben

6/09/2010 Stuttgart, Germany – Universum

[w/ Streetlight Manifesto, Supervillains, Dan Potthast]

6/23/2010 Towson, MD – Recher Theatre

6/24/2010 Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts

6/26/2010 Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom

6/27/2010 Worcester, MA – The Palladium

6/29/2010 Montreal, QC – Metropolis

6/30/2010 Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre

7/01/2010 Detroit, MI – Magic Stick

7/02/2010 Chicago, IL – Metro

7/03/2010 Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s

7/04/2010 Covington, KY – Mad Hatter

7/06/2010 Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater

7/07/2010 Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex

7/09/2010 Seattle, WA – Studio Seven

7/10/2010 Portland, OR – Satyricon

7/11/2010 San Francisco, CA – Slim’s

7/12/2010 West Hollywood, CA – Key Club

7/13/2010 West Hollywood, CA – Key Club

7/15/2010 Anaheim, CA – House of Blues

7/16/2010 San Diego, CA – Soma

7/17/2010 Tucson, AZ – The Rock

7/19/2010 Austin, TX – Emo’s

7/20/2010 Dallas, TX – The Door

7/21/2010 Houston, TX – Warehouse Live

7/23/2010 Jacksonville, FL – The Pit

7/24/2010 Tampa, FL – Transitions

7/25/2010 Pembroke Pines, FL – The Talent Farm

[w/ Streetlight Manifesto, Crime In Stereo, Dan Potthast]

7/28/2010 Raleigh, NC – Lincoln Theater

7/29/2010 Lancaster, PA – Chameleon Club

7/30/2010 New York, NY – Highline Ballroom

7/31/2010 Poughkeepsie, NY – The Chance

8/01/2010 New York, NY – Highline Ballroom

8/19/2010 St. Louis, MO – Fubar

[w/ New Found Glory, Lemuria]

8/20/2010 Springfield, MO – Remington’s Downtown

8/22/2010 Memphis, TN – The Hi-Tone

8/24/2010 Birmingham, AL – Zydeco

8/26/2010 Wilmington, NC – The Soapbox Laundrolounge

8/27/2010 Greenville, SC – The Handlebar

8/28/2010 Columbia, SC – New Brookland Tavern

8/29/2010 Tallahassee, FL – Floyd’s Music Store

8/31/2010 Pensacola, FL – Phineas Phogg’s

9/03/2010 Vineland, NJ – Hangar 84

9/09/2010 Brisbane, Australia – Globe

9/10/2010 Brisbane City, Australia – The Fort

9/11/2010 Sydney, Australia – Gaelic Club

9/12/2010 Sydney, Australia – Masonic Hall

9/15/2010 Perth, Australia – Amplifier Bar

9/16/2010 Adelaide City, Australia – Fowlers Live

9/17/2010 Weribee (Melbourne), Australia – Club POW!

9/18/2010 Fitzroy (Melbourne), Australia – Everlyn Hotel

9/19/2010 Footscray, Australia – Phoenix Youth Centre

If you live somewhere in these United States of America, chances are the ridiculously awesome hardcore/pop-punk combo Transit are coming to play at a club near you. Their coast-to-coast tour with A Loss For Words just kicked off last week, and to get you as pumped as we are, we’re passing along a free download of their song “Stays The Same.” The track is from their recently-reissued (on 12″ vinyl!) debut EP Stay Home. (The guys ALSO just dropped a split 7″ with Man Overboard.) And their first LP is tentatively due for release from Run For Cover in September. Exciting shit! CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE TRACK! Below, the dates:

MAY 23 – Portland, ME @ Big Easy w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 24 – Albany, NY @ Bogies w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 25 – Amityville, NY @ Broadway w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 26 – Clinton, NJ @ The Aquifer w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 27 – Bensalem, PA @ Polanka Park w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 28 – Baltimore, MD @ Charm City Art Space w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 29 – Springfield, VA @ Jaxx w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 30 – High Point, NC @ Arts by Alexanderw/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
MAY 31 – Summerville, SC @ Summerville American Legion w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
JUN 01 – Jacksonville, FL @ the Pit w/ A Loss For Words, Fallen From The Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 02 – Orlando, FL @ Uncle Lou’s w/ A Loss For Words, Fallen From The Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 03 – Pembrook Pines, FL @ The Talent Farm w/ AL4W, Fallen From the Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 04 – Tampa, FL @ The Orpheum w/ A Loss For Words, Fallen From The Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 05 – Tallahassee, FL @ The Farside w/ A Loss For Words, Fallen From The Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 07 – Mansfield, TX @ The Warehouse w/ A Loss For Words, Fallen From The Sky, Kid Liberty
JUN 08 – San Antonio, TX @ White Rabit w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
JUN 09 – Midland, TX @ The Pine Box w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
JUN 10 – Las Cruces, NM @ Dream Center w/ A Loss For Words, Kid Liberty
JUN 11 – Albuquerque, NM @ Gold Manor w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 12 – Mesa, AZ @ Mesa Underground w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 13 – Murietta, CA @ Galindo’s w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 14 – Canoga Park, CA @ Cobalt Cafe w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 15 – Oakland, CA @ Oakland Metro w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 16 – Sacramento, CA @ The Boardwalk w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 17 – Vancouver, WA @ The FCC w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 18 – Olympia, WA @ Black Lake Grange w/ A Loss For Words, This Time Next Year
JUN 21 – Denver, CA @ Cervante’s Other Side w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 22 – Omaha, NE @ Sokol Underground w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 23 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 24 – Buffalo, MN @ The Vault w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 25 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Borg Ward w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 26 – Romeo, MI @ Static Age w/ A Loss For Words & Such Gold
JUN 27 – Covington, KY @ Mad Hatter w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 28 – Erie, PA @ The Hangout w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 29 – Rochester, NY @ Dubland Underground w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUN 30 – Watertown, NY @ The Dungon @ Velocity w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUL 01 – Manchester, NY @ Rocko’s w/ A Loss For Words, Such Gold
JUL 02 – Allston, MA @ ICC w/ A Loss For Words, Defeo, Man Overboard, Balance And Composure

AM Taxi have been picking up momentum here in Chicago lately - it seems like they’re always getting interviewed on the radio. I mean, literally every time I turn on the radio. Weird. Anyway, today they debuted their new video for “Fed Up” on MySpace. The song is from their forthcoming album We Don’t Stand A Chance, which is dropping June 8th courtesy of Virgin Records. Watch the video now, and await anxiously Assault.it’s next breathless AM Taxi update as we try to latch on to their out-of-control bandwagon:

AM Taxi:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

Just The Kid are all about “fun.” They titled their debut EP Keep It Fun!. Their songs are exclusively about girls – a little sniping here and there, but  mostly these guys just want to have fun with them. The sound is highly polished and proudly synthetic; think a slightly glossier Metro Station. To a lot of people, that’s considered a damning rather than a benediction. But as I listened to Keep It Fun! over the course of a few weeks, throwing it on when I needed a quick blast of extremely refined sucrose, it more than served its purpose. This is a certain kind of thing that’s not exactly my certain thing, but it’s an extremely accomplished and smart version of that thing. So kudos to these guys for keeping it fun for all of us instead of just their target demographic of socially awkward teenage girls.

The EP begins with a fairly generic synth intro; it kind of sounds like these guys are bringing the fun from outer space. And then “Shawty,” the first proper track, launches into riffs that seem to draw inspiration primarily from JTK’s parents’ collection of Asia and Def Leppard records. It’s a jarring transition – I didn’t expect to taste the familiar arena tang of dry ice on a record about going to the mall and picking out some goofy sneakers. But there’s a few of these little touches scattered about that make Keep It Fun! feel at least nominally like real rock music. “Hot Damn” hangs on a “let’s dance, dance, baby, baby, let’s dance” lyric that’s probably as self-aware as it is inane. I mean, can you honestly argue with this stuff? It’s cotton candy.

I’d say thirteen minutes is the perfect amount of Just The Kid – they’d have to switch it up a little to sustain my interest for an entire full-length. But I’ll throw Keep It Fun! in from time to time, I’m sure, whenever I want to sashay around my apartment with a fruity mixed drink and pretend I’m in a one man off-Broadway show of Sex And The City. If you’re into this kind of stuff (and I’m sure most of you secretly are), then it’s a great example of its genre. Put it on a cocaine playlist with Cobra Starship, Metro Station, and some Infinity On High-era Fall Out Boy and you’ll be having more fun than the entire cast of Gossip Girl on your average Saturday night at 3am. I like it, in my own private way.

Just The Kid:

• MySpace
• PureVolume
• YouTube

Direct Hit! is the best band to come out of Wisconsin since The Beatles. They recently released their fourth EP (#4) and it’s so awesome that we felt compelled to act DH! mastermind Nick Woods some probing questions in an attempt to get to the bottom of this Direct Hit! phenomenon. Read on to discover what gets the band pumped, where their ideas come from, and how the band would (probably) fare in a pull-up contest against the Assault.it crew.

Assault.it: What gets you pumped? Where do you find inspiration in your daily life?

Nick Woods: That’s a pretty heavy question. If you mean “daily life” as in, “what I do at work most days, and what I do after work when I get back to my apartment,” I’m usually pretty “inspired” by my live-in girlfriend and my paycheck. If you mean what inspires me to make music, that pretty much came from listening to too much Metallica in middle school, too much Green Day in high school, and not enough of either now that I’m in my 20s.

As far as our overall sound evolving -- I don’t worry about it too much. I think it all goes back to boredom. I write different-sounding songs when I’m bored of the old ones. But thus far, I’ve written over twenty songs with Direct Hit, and the vast majority are made up of Gb, Ab, Bb, and Db power chords, played in different orders, with different rhythms, and different vocal parts. I think we’ve done a pretty good job making a lot out of a little, and I don’t think we’ve exhausted the possibilities yet.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4l-ePeq8bI

What’s the hardest part of being in Direct Hit?

There’s honestly not a lot that can be construed as difficult with Direct Hit. And if something becomes difficult, we usually find a way to either kill it, or avoid it. I wanted this band to be 100% fun from the very beginning. So if something isn’t fun, we usually don’t do it. We won’t play a show unless we think there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll be able to party. We don’t sit and practice 4 bars of a song for hours at a time. That’s the kind of stuff that turns playing in a band into a job, and I’ve already got one of those. I don’t need another. It’s obviously work getting a tight band together, but I think there’s a line between ‘tight’ and ‘perfect’ that I’m not all that psyched about crossing. Not because I think a perfect band doesn’t sound good. It’s just cause sometimes I’d rather go get wasted at my apartment and watch Terminator than practice.

You guys have a super-catchy slogan w/ the “Fuck you! Get pumped!” Where did that come from?

When Direct Hit first started, I used to tell people to get pumped just as an obnoxious slogan to signify what we were all about. We’ve never really written ‘music with a message.’ But you can’t really tell people that, because then they think your group doesn’t have a point. It’s weird that everyone’s band has to be ‘political,’ or ‘emo,’ or ‘DIY,’ or ‘funny,’ or ‘traditional’ or whatever nowadays. And I thought it was weird how novel it had become for a band to just play to entertain other people, instead of making some kind of grandiose statement about how the rest of the world should be leading its collective life. So ‘get pumped’ was just kind of the most obvious message -- that we write music to psych people up, or to excite a crowd. We aren’t trying to inspire thought, but we’re definitely trying to inspire a feeling. Kid Rock tries to do the same thing though, and his music blows, so maybe it’s not the best mission statement. I guess we’ll find out.

We added the ‘fuck you’ just because we think it’s funny. Profanity usually makes anything a lot more hilarious, in my book.

Is there any particular reason you chose to release 5 EPs rather than a full length? Is it easier or harder to write songs when you know you’re writing for an EP?

There are a lot of reasons we’ve approached recording that way. I guess it all stems from the fact that I’m a pretty vain guy, and like having good, well-produced copies of the songs I’ve worked on. Problem is that you have to pay if you want to do that kind of thing, and I’m not good at saving money. So it was a lot easier for me, especially in the beginning, to fund those kind of recordings if I did them in little batches, on a more frequent basis. We’ve gone into every session having more than four songs written, but we’ve usually picked the best four, and just rolled with those so I didn’t have to come up with money for twice the time in a studio.

As time went on, I think we stuck with the 4-song formula just because it’s easier to hold people’s attention if you’re putting new stuff out every few months, instead of once every couple of years. Plus, it gave us a chance to try new things in the studio and hone the sound we wanted without pissing off an audience that had invested two years of time into our band, only to get a piece of shit full-length record. Releasing small batches of songs kind of gives you a built in do-over since you have new stuff coming out so often.

By my calculations, you guys are the second craziest thing to ever emerge from Wisconsin (after the practice of dissolving bodies in industrial tubs of acid once the flesh has been removed and stored safely in a refrigerator). Is there something in the WI water that makes you guys nuts? Or do you come by it “the hard way”?

I dunno man. There’s plenty of crazy fucking people that hang out at Lambeau Field in -2 degree weather multiple times a year. I think we’re pretty low on the totem pole in comparison.

What are your ultimate plans for Direct Hit? How far will you pursue this dream of musical superstardom?

We don’t really make plans, to tell you the truth. The way we figure it, if we keep having a ludicrously good time, the people coming to see us play will too. And when you think about it, that’s really the best dumb business strategy any band can have -- Make sure you bring an awesome time with you wherever you go.

I can’t speak for the other members in my band, but I’m not pursuing musical superstardom. If someone wants to pay me a few million bucks for my tunes, and I don’t have to work again for the rest of my life as a result, I welcome those phone calls. That shit doesn’t happen though -- I know from experience. You make a living like that by spending 10 years acting like a bitch backstage at the Warped Tour, kissing some stage manager’s ass just to get moved from the 1:30PM to the 2:00PM time slot on some side stage, so you can play to 150 uncaring teenagers instead of 100. Fuck that. Like I said before, I’ve got a job -- I don’t need another one. I’d rather keep playing music for fun and work at a slightly less cool day job. It’s way more awesome for me to show up at a house with 40 people I know personally who are ready to party and get nuts than it is playing for a thousand strangers, half of whom are there because they want to get laid.

Will you ever re-release the older EPs in the series, or are those forever lost to the sands of time?

We don’t have plans to re-release any of them ourselves, but if someone wants to pay to put ‘em out, I don’t think any of us will raise a stink about it. The full length we eventually release will probably be compiled from all of the best songs on our EPs, so people will have a chance to listen to what we think is the best stuff we’ve written. But if you wanna hear the old material, you’ll probably have to get it either from me, or from people who have copies.

Do you have any advice for young bands just getting started? What do you consider the working musician’s best tools in this day & age, besides good songwriting and hallucinogens?

The best advice? Work on your skills first, and your MySpace page later. People care about the latter a lot less than you might think when the first half is good.

The best tools? Good equipment, Bandcamp.com, Gmail, a cell phone, and a reliable van. You don’t need much more than that.

Do you have any musical recommendations for our readers? Real boner-popping crazy shit that will make us go nuts, please.

Career Suicide‘s album Attempted Suicide hasn’t left the CD player in my car for the last month. Them, and their guitarist’s other band, Fucked Up, are my two favorite punk rock bands at the moment. Fucked Up has a split coming out with NOFX soon, I think, if it hasn’t come out already, that I’m pretty psyched out of my mind about.

If we had done this interview in person, after your show at Slam Castle, Tim planned to challenge the entire band to a pull-up contest. (He installed a pull-up bar in his apartment.) Do you think you would have won? If so, why?

Nope. I’m a fatass. So’s Danny. So’s Mike. Alex has problems with fainting, so she’s out too. Robbie would’ve owned all of you though -- He builds houses in Winter in Wisconsin. You don’t fuck with people like that. At least I don’t.

Direct Hit!:

• Band Camp
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Last FM
• Death To False Hope Records

Philadelphia pop-punk band The Wonder Years can sound a little generic at first listen -- it’s the same strain of super-melodic emo pounded out through the years by bands like Saves The Day, The Get Up Kids, and (on their good days) Fall Out Boy. Your initial reaction might include thoughts about solid production, great-but-samey songwriting, and slightly whiny vocals. Pretty much what you’d expect. But if you listen to the band’s new album The Upsides for a long time, at a high volume, new qualities begin to merge: riffs that switch melodic lines in interesting ways, epic gang vocals that propel pretty much every song to anthem status, and a pleasing bro-ish quality that suggests the guys in the Wonder Years are just nice, average dudes with an exceptionally honed rock attack.

I think it was the dozenth time I listened to “Logan Circle,” the disc’s second (and second-best) track, that the band’s magic really started to work on me: between lead singer Dan Campbell “drowning all [his] sorrows in Lucky Charms and soy milk” and the boisterous chant that explodes on the song’s climax, there’s a kind of haphazardly joyful attitude elevating the whole thing a few notches above the usual pop-punk racket. “Washington Square Park,” my personal favorite, kicks offs with the kind of strong, sharp riffs that used to make Hot Water Music go-to beer-run music in Third World Timmy‘s Dodge Intrepid circa 2001-2002. The vocals do get a little whiny, for my taste, at certain times, but it’s not something to worry about. There’s enough shouting and screaming to get you psyched.

With the overarching lyrical theme “most days are bad days,” the Wonder Years present a clear-eyed perspective on typical suburban tomfoolery. Nothing ever gets too heavy on The Upsides -- these are songs about stealing Christmas trees and getting an apartment with your girlfriend. But the melodies pack some big emotional punch, so be careful; this music might make you pretty nostalgic and misty-eyed if you’re over the age of twenty and you’ve been drinking red wine for a few hours. The Wonders Years’ music is best enjoyed on the open road, at just a few miles over the speed limit, with the breeze blowing your hair around. If they ever make a commercial for male-on-male emo bonding, this would be a great soundtrack.

All-in-all, I definitely recommend this band. They’ve got a great sense of humor and some serious songwriting skills, and The Upsides grows in power the more time and attention you give it. But it’s also great if you just want to blast it while drinking Old Style and playing Street Fighter 4 with your entourage. I’m glad I ignored my shamefully cynical first impressions and kept listening -- this is a solid entry in the pop-punk genre, with enough of a hardcore edge to make it pretty much classic.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-62V06Quiok

The Wonder Years:

• MySpace
• PureVolume
• LastFM
• No Sleep Records

Boston-bred hardcore/pop-punk band Four year Strong’s Enemy of the World opens with the single “It Must Really Suck to Be Four Year Strong Right Now,” which contains the lyric “Don’t fix it if it hasn’t broken yet.” It’s a good thing to remember – I’m going to sum up their approach and my reaction in that single line.

Just kidding.

Four Year Strong aren’t a band that sets out to reinvent themselves with every song or every album; they set out to be consistent, riff your brains out and write some tight, explosive pop-punk. I’m in the middle of writing a feature involving The Offspring, and their approach makes me think this is the evolution of that band’s approach: some very metallic elements laid over a foundation of strong hooks and punkish speed. Their sound is heavy, but never brutal – even their singers’ roaring vocalization isn’t really going to threaten anybody but the feeble elderly. It’s just what you expect of the sound. The drums rarely slow, and the instruments push and pull on different tempos (“fast” and “wicked fast,” in Bostonian parlance) to make everything feel like everything is always moving toward something. Yet there is never a shortage of listenability – all eleven songs present on the album pulverize the ears, but they also keep the melodies at front and center. The choruses are infectious.

This is important, because Four Year Strong’s music is specifically meant to be channeled into its audience singing back to them in concert. These are little songs meant to make little shows sound like arena spectacles. They’re not gonna stop to smell the roses, but they also make sure that everyone can keep up. The bridges slow down just enough to let everyone feel the music swell before the chorus hits again. A single word to describe the band is “communal.” They recently told AbsolutePunk that they “just play exactly what [they] want to hear.” To an extent, most bands do that (I’m sure Radiohead’s not in a studio right now noodling around on music they hate), but for Four Year Strong, that means their fans share their very same passions.

That leads to all the lyrics being very over-dramatic: broad but deliberately and easily relatable. Everything’s about misery; death is  a recurring theme. Variations on the idea of “proving that [someone is] alive” show up on “Nineteen with Neck Tatz” and “Find My Way Back” – two consecutive songs in the middle of the album. The hook to “Flannel is the Color of My Energy”: “’cause I don’t wanna live another day without your company.” Even the album’s title implies a unity against something bigger than the band. Is this directness a fault? Maybe. It gets repetitive to hear it over and over again, but there’s comfort to be gleaned from the very shared nature of everything in music. Everything is tailor-made for maximum chanting, singing along and being part of something in the moment.

So, no, the album doesn’t quite set the world on fire. They’re not the most original band, and their set of ideas can feel limited a couple songs away from the end of it. But the genre’s not meant to be experienced as a record on a hard drive as an end unto itself. This music thrives in concert, surrounded by fans who feel the same way. As a side note, it’s admirable that there’s nothing alienating about it. Everyone gets a chance to feel, whatever that feeling is. It almost feels like a bonus that they’re skilled musicians who aren’t wasting their time on silly novelty ditties. It definitely hasn’t broken yet.

Four Year Strong:

• MySpace
• Official Site
• Pure Volume
• Decaydance

From 1998 to 2004, Alkaline Trio was the best pop-punk band in the world. This is a fact. They did only one thing – springy, melodic songs with rubbery bass-lines, lots of chunky palm-muted riffs, and dark, soul-searching lyrics – but they did it awesomely. And then they started to do other things (play around with keyboards and synthesizers, let the drummer write songs, get married and become happy with their personal lives) and, suddenly, everything changed. They were still a good band, but Crimson (2005) and Agony & Irony (2008) are nobody’s favorite Alkaline Trio albums. They’re melodic and musically accomplished in ways that displayed “growth” and “maturity,” but they also felt somewhat forced lyrically, with singer/guitarist Matt Skiba relying increasingly on cliched and clumsy metaphors as his songwriting got less personal. The dudes (bassist/singer Dan Andriano and drummer Derek Grant, plus Skiba) scattered across the country and started doing aging rocker stuff like “surfing” and “having kids.” But about a year ago, everything started to change again: the guys started hanging out in Chicago more, they talked about “returning to their roots,” Skiba got divorced. All of this could mean only thing: COMEBACK! So, the first question: Is This Addiction a return to their glory days? Does it accomplish very much with, musically, very little? Is it superficially evil for fun with genuinely heavy emotional content for serious? Can it explode a unicorn’s boner in a great blast of pink stars and fairy dust?

Short answer: No, yes, sort of, and maybe.

Long answer: This Addiction doesn’t sound like Goddamnit, Alkaline Trio’s much-ballyhooed, now classic first full-length. And that’s going to disappoint some people, because some people are always disappointed that the band evolved from being a bunch of drunk-ass nineteen year-olds. And some people, like me, will never be entirely happy without Glenn Porter in the line-up; Derek Grant has always struck me as a weird fit for the Trio, and a lot of folks, myself included, hold him almost entirely responsible for trying to push the band in artistic directions they weren’t quite skilled enough to master. The Trio that most of us first fell in love with is never coming back, but that’s been true for years – we should all be used to it by now. Matt Skiba is never going to describe our emotions with profane, pin-point accuracy the way he did on “Radio,” and Dan Andriano will never be sad again, apparently. But This Addiction is a sharp, punchy addition to the band’s catalog. They don’t try anything they haven’t already mastered, but it’s an absolute joy to hear them doing these things that they are very, very good at.

The album kicks off with three fast, hard-charging tracks that all sound like they should have been b-sides. I say this is as a compliment; over the last couple years, all the best Trio songs have been ones that didn’t actually make it on to their records. “This Addiction” begins the record on an extremely high note – racing tempos, a bright melody, uncomplicated lyrics that equate love with, um, addiction in a way that’s not necessarily novel but still brutally effective. And then Dan Andriano gives the best vocal performance of the entire disc on “Dine, Dine My Darling,” daring to make a Misfits joke on a song that celebrates (once again) domestic bliss. “Lead Poisoning” features Skiba’s trademark “dun…dun-nun-nuh” riffing, but it sounds good, like hanging out with an old friend. Plus, a simple, cool saxophone solo sets the track apart from the roughly twenty-five others almost exactly like it in the band’s catalog. Things take a bad turn after that, though – “Dead On The Floor” cannibalizes both “Trouble Breathing” and “San Francisco” (from Goddamnit) and stops the album’s momentum in a tired and unforgivable fashion.

It gets somewhat hit-or-miss after that. “The American Scream,” the token political track, isn’t bad, but its central metaphor is a little corny. “Draculina,” “Eating Me Alive,” and “Piss & Vinegar” are a little too mid-tempo and interchangeable to run in a row, and they bog down the middle of the record. But This Addiction finishes stronger than any Trio record in recent memory: “Dorothy” blasts out of the speakers in an explosion of double-time drumming and eerie David Lynch references, by far the most exciting song Skiba’s written in six years. And “Fine,” Andriano’s gentle closer, is a tearjerker that builds to epic status without over-reaching. Maybe the songs in the middle only feel like filler because they’re book-ended by such powerful material; in any event, I ain’t complaining. This is definitely the best Trio record since Good Mourning, and it might end up ranking along with Maybe I’ll Catch Fire and From Here To Infirmary when all is said and done.

Let’s face it – these guys are getting older, and they can’t do this forever. But This Addiction is an excellent, full-bodied reminder of why we started loving them in the first place, and if they never made another record, their legacy would be secure. This is the way you grow up – not with intricate piano parts or relentless overdubs, but by knowing who you are and what you do, and then doing it the best you know how. I’m glad Alkaline Trio are doing their one thing again, and doing it perfectly.  

Alkaline Trio:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter

True story: I desperately wanted to purchase Sum 41′s Does This Look Infected? upon its initial release in 2002, hooked by the metallic crunch of “The Hell Song” and intrigued by the cool cover art. But I was too embarrassed to walk into a store and throw my money down on the record; what would the employees at Circuit City think? I was eighteen years old, and I passed. Fast forward another two years, and I was still nagged by the feeling that, if even half of the songs on the disc were as good “The Hell Song,” DTLI had the potential to be a favorite album. So I had my then-girlfriend walk into the store and purchase it for me while I waited, sweaty-palmed and nervous, in the car. This is not behavior that I’m proud of, but I fancied myself a true connoisseur, interested in only the finest and most sophisticated music available. When I look back at the stuff I considered “fine” and “sophisticated” now, it makes me feel like a moron. Also: like I should’ve spent a lot more time listening to Sum 41.

Sum 41 broke with the song “Fat Lip,” a chunky, exuberantly Canadian update of the Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right (To Party).” It was the kind of song that Mr. 51% and I would download with our friend Becki’s Napster (we didn’t fully understand the internet yet, so our musical HQ was a suburban house with DSL two blocks over from my parents’ residence) and then include on epic mix CDs featuring equal amounts of Akinyele and Elton John. We would then take these mix CDs to random suburban locations, blast the shit from my ’88 Grand Prix, and sit on lawn chairs drinking Sprite and smoking Swisher Sweets. (Yet I was worried about being too “mature” to purchase a pop-punk CD from a faceless retail chain a mere one year later.) Anyways, Sum 41 was never the most erudite band – they were funny in the most sophomoric way possible, and most of Derek Whybley’s rhyme schemes followed a simple “AABB” pattern. (This can be heard on DTLI’s first single “Still Waiting“: “So am I still waiting / For this world to stop hating / Can’t find a good reason / Can’t find hope to believe in.”) They were not subtle. They didn’t worry about subtext, or veil their real feeling in elaborate metaphors. They just wanted to drink beer and trash your house, and while that sounds like a phenomenal mission statement to me now, at the time I was more concerned with “valid artistic expression.”

Which begs the question: Isn’t that what Sum 41 is doing all over this record? The first track (“The Hell Song”) is about a friend of the band that contracted HIV, and it employs hard-charging metalcore riffs (before metalcore was really a thing) to express the anxiety and self-doubt the dudes experienced after hearing the news. “My Direction” tackles teen suicide, mixing bright pop-punk hooks, shouted verses, and snatches of spoken-word statistics; it also has a couple wicked breakdowns, and this is all crammed into two minutes and three seconds. When I listen to Sum 41 now, it seems like they do everything that I want bands to do (write catchy songs, sing about real shit, stretch themselves to the absolute breaking point of their musical abilities, and, most importantly, shred on guitar), and they do it very quickly and without any filler. Their output since this record has been spotty (Chuck got serious and heavy, forgetting the hooks; Underclass Hero is to American Idiot what my senior-year essay about The Plague is Camsus’s actual book), but for thirty-one brilliant minutes in 2002, Sum 41 totally nailed it.

Dave "Brownsound" Baksh

The album really pwns balls in the back half, when guitarist Dave Baksh gets to indulge every nutty idea he ever had while listening to Iron Maiden. “All Messed Up” staples squeaky fills to simple riffs, elevating the song to banger status. “Mr. Amsterdam” starts like a Metallica song, but it doesn’t have time for any classical gas – the palm-muted riffs on the verse stab hard, there’s a glorious hardcore breakdown (this stuff played fabulously live, BTW; the band’s light show accentuated every double-kick hit), and, once again, we find the band mixing three or four different strains of pop-punk into something infectious, fun, and very nearly original. DTLI closes with the brutal one-two punch of “Billy Spleen” (an excellent cocaine jam) and “Hooch,” which slams you for two and a half minutes with a breakneck tempo and enthusiastic gang vox, and then moves from epic guitar solo to a dreamy, fuzzed-up outro. This breathless second-side stretch cements, for me, Does This Look Infected? as a modern masterpiece; it’s as if NOFX made an entire disc filled with songs as good as “Soul Doubt” and didn’t waste my time with half-hearted stabs at lounge and reggae.

I re-discovered this record last week while moving stuff from my old place to my new apartment; Does This Look Infected? was the only disc I could find that hadn’t been packed up, and I needed something to jam on while driving my mom’s van around for eight hours. At no time did I get bored or want to listen to something else; I literally listened to Sum 41 all day. And I loved it. I don’t care if it’s music for bored teenagers – most of the time I still feel like a bored teenager. This is the best possible soundtrack for sitting outside and crushing Milwaukee’s Best; it has the hormonal adolescent charge of ’80s hair metal without any of the unfortunate misogyny; it’s hard but hooky, meaning you choose whether you want to bang your head or sing along (or, if you’re really talented like me, you can do both). This is awesome, genuine music – it’s the best that four young guys could do. Sum 41 put themselves on the line with this shit, and it’s a shame that they’ve faltered in important ways since (Baksh left the band after Chuck, which hurt; Whybley married [and was subsequently divorced by] Avril Lavigne, which is just kinda sad). Recently I hear tell that the boys are back in the studio, banging out a new record, and there’s a secret chamber in my heart that really, really wants the end result to be amazing.

But even if it’s not, I have my battered old copy of Does This Look Infected?, and I can listen to it all day.

(Forbidden Love is Assault’s bi-weekly look at albums whose appeal defies all logic and reason – the musical art that the general critical society deems inferior and unsophisticated, but that we just can’t stop listening to anyway. It’s not a guilty pleasure, because we don’t feel guilty about the relatively harmless act of liking things, but rather a matter of culturally inconvienent taste.)

We love The Swellers. We think Ups & Downsizing, their 2009 disc for Fueled By Ramen, was one of the best records released last year; we still listen to it every day while we punch each other in the nuts and make poo poo jokes at the office. And lead Swelldog Nick Diener was kind enough to let us interview him earlier this year, in probably the coolest thing that’s happened to us since we got into this blogging game. So we are contractually obligated to share any and all Swellers-related tidbits with you. Here’s a good one: it’s a video of the dudes rocking their massive, butt-bangingly crazy single “Fire Away” live on the recent Motion City Soundtrack Dino Initiative tour. I think you’re gonna like it – and when I say “think, ” I mean “know.” (Also: “like” means “lose your shit and dance around like you just scored tickets to the N*Sync reunion tour.”) Check it:

There’s also a quick interview with the guys about being more like truck drivers than musicians with all the touring they do.

The Swellers:

• MySpace
• Official Site
• Last FM
• iTunes

Hey, did you know that we’re grown-ass men who LOVE Paramore? Well, we are! We received their latest album, Brand New Eyes, quite enthusastically, and we’ve been impatiently waiting for some strong new video sauce from them. Now it’s here! Their new video for “The Only Exception” should be absolute manna to thirteen year-old girls and their pervy uncles alike, plus pop-punk lifers like us. I personally would not have chosen this for the next single (“Looking Up” and “The Only Exception” both shine brighter and bang harder), but I guess they gotta appease the wussies every now and then. Anyways — watch the shit now:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2HjQSCTrc

More steamy pop-punk action:

• Official site

• MySpace

• LastFM

• Fan site

It’s not too often I hang on to the flyers that get handed to me when I walk out of a show here in Chicago. I’ve even written about a better way to stand out from the rest of the unsigned bands. (One thing was to not hand out flyers.) It just so happens that in this particular instance, my hands were full, and so I stuffed all the flyers in my pocket before heading down the street to the Black Rock after a solid showing at The Metro by The Fold and Lucky Boys Confusion.

When I got home, I found a flyer in my pocket from The Delivery Boys, and to say they had the odds stacked against them from the get-go was an understatement. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the production quality and overall sound of The Delivery Boys’ EP after my initial listen on their MySpace page. When you’re listening to 20+ albums a week it’s easy to forget the names of all the songs and especially the bands, but every once in awhile you find yourself humming the words, or remembering parts of the hook in your head while you’re in the car, when you first wake up, or maybe even in the shower. (If you’re Oswald Hobbes that’s where you do your best performing too.)

This is exactly what happened to me this past weekend, and after some considerable searching I realized that the song was, “Special Delivery,” by the guys of TDB. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of any upcoming shows in the Chicago area for the band either. It’s not the only song that’s catchy coming from TDB, they also recorded a holiday song, “You’re All I Want For Christmas,” which is just as delicious. According to their latest MySpace info they’ll have some more music out soon, and I’m personally hoping to get a chance to see the guys live out here in the big city sometime soon. Let that be a notice to you local Chicago rock venues. (I’m looking at you Reggies, Metro, Lincoln Hall, and Shuba’s.)

The Delivery Boys

• Paul Holloway – vocals/guitar
• Eric Olsen – bass/vocals
• Ryan Bennett – guitar/vocals
• Matt Dailly – drums

More from TDB

• The Delivery Boys on PureVolume
• The Delivery Boys on MySpace
• The Delivery Boys on ReverbNation

You’d be forgiven for assuming that the dudes in Motion City Soundtrack are a bunch of pussies. Justin Pierre, the frontman, has a sweet, high-pitched voice, and his wacky over-moussed hair suggests an alternate universe Nikki Sixx, post-overdose. The rest of the dudes in the band sort of look like they really enjoy Magic: The Gathering. Two of their records (including this one) have been produced by Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, who is actually a cool dude but loses cred by palling around with king-of-the-douches Tom DeLonge. So, if you possesed only these facts, and maybe had heard a few snippets of the band’s music here and there, you probably wouldn’t be overly impressed or consider them the kind of “serious” music that you pretend to like when you’re talking to girls at hipster bars. But, damnit, Motion City Soundtrack are amazing, and My Dinosaur Life is their best record yet – a fast and thick collection of scathingly honest rock songs executed perfectly by guys that are total experts. It announces, in no uncertain terms, that these planeswalkers are done taking shit.

The most explicit example of this (literally) is the track “@!#?@!,” in which Pierre warns, “You all need to go away, you motherfuckers / You all need to leave me and my homeboys alone.” Shit is real, dawg. But in case you’re not convinced, listen to the other 11 songs, none of which gets nearly as mushy as every song on their last record (Even If It Kills Me), and at least half of which feature heavier riffs and faster tempos than anything in the MCS catalog. “Disappear” and “The Weakends” are both stand-out rockers that get deep (although the latter loses points for its Fall Out Boy-seque), and “Pulp Fiction” and “Skin & Bones” showcase Pierre’s oddball humor and instinctive melodic gifts. Dude is really killing it on this record, BTW – he’s developed a new, super-croony delivery style that elevates an otherwise boilerplate (for these guys) track like first single “Her Words Destroyed My Planet” from MCS-by-numbers to total-boner-extravaganza.

My Dinosaur Life is a coming-out party for a band that has refined its formula, charted out strengths and weaknesses, and made a really great record that plays by its own rules and includes a good number of surprises even for longtime fans. Lyrically, Pierre is in fine form; he sounds nowhere near as defeated as he did on Even If It Kills Me – this dude is ready to rumble, packing hundred of words into dense narratives and then letting them cascade out in that beautiful voice, never losing control for a second. He’d actually make an excellent rapper, probably. The band kicks up dust behind him, relying less on big keyboard hooks than on hard-charging guitar riffs, and this makes a big difference – Motion City Soundtrack finally sound like He-Men. This is the kind of record that Alkaline Trio made with Good Mourning, that Fall Out Boy made with Infinity On High: these boys have grown up, and My Dinosaur Life is as thematically deep as the hooks are wide. I hope it’s a hit (and that MCS’s new tenure on a major label goes better than most of their emo peers’) – Motion City Soundtrack deserve to be huge, and this is the record that should do it.

Sometimes I think all forms of music are equally valid and beautiful; when I’m in a gentle, contemplative mood, I can appreciate anything. During these sojourns in Sensitive World, I truly believe that music is the best and purest method of emotional expression available to the human race, and that everyone should have a band and create whatever their heart dictates, no matter how lame.

But that’s not true. The best kind of music is punk rock, and most everything else is just hippie bullshit. Direct Hit! is a totally bullshit-free band, and I hope they go out and murder Animal Collective and whoever else the flower children are grooving to now. Go to Direct Hit!’s website, click “play” on their mp3 widget, and the first thing you hear is a raw voice screaming the instructions in this article’s title. That is, as we say, rad. The music that follows does not disappoint – it’s melodic pop-punk that’s about as “hardcore” as pop-punk can really get. These guys are fast, tight, and clearly insane. These are the three qualities most highly treasured around the office here (at least among myself and Mr. 51% – Third World Timmy seems to prefer comically pretentious pomp-rock by failed movie actors), so Direct Hit! instantly went into heavy rotation.

You can download their recently-released EP #3 right now, for the price of your choosing, at the aforementioned website, and I strongly suggest you do so. (I also suggest you donate a few bucks, since these guys deserve some cash for making music so blissfully funny and squirrel-shit nuts). These are songs about guns and zombies and murder, and they are totally awesome. Like it or not, this is your new favorite band.

As you most likely already know, AssaultBLOG’s hometown heroes Alkaline Trio are releasing a new record on February 23rd. It’s called This Addiction and Matt Skiba has promised that it’s a return to their “roots.” I’m always skeptical of claims like that, but I just heard the first single (and title track) and it definitely sounds like something that could’ve been released in the From Here To Infirmary/Good Mourning days. And those were very good days indeed.

So click on that picture of the album’s excellent cover art, allow the site to Tweet a promo from your account, and you can listen to “This Addiction” as many times as you want to, for free. I have the day off from my (paying) job, so I probably won’t move from this spot for a few hours. It’s a pretty good song.

(You can pre-order This Addiction now from Epitaph.)

It’s no secret that we love the Swellers here at the Assault offices – their latest record, 2009′s Ups & Downsizing, provided us with plenty of inspiration during long coffee-fueled nights of writing reviews and hammering out tutorials. So it was a real honor when lead Sweller Nick Diener graciously consented to answering a few questions for us via e-mail while taking a much-deserved break from the road.

AssaultBLOG: What’s the typical journey for a Swellers song from conception to actualization?

Nick Diener: Jonathan and I are the songwriters. We’ll have a riff, a chorus, sometimes a whole song’s music just happening in our heads. We bring it to each other, and if we like it, we keep it. If we sorta like it, we trash it. That’s probably why it takes us like a year to write 6 songs. We rarely have “extra” songs to play around with. Sometimes it’ll take 9 months to get a song right, sometimes it’ll take 9 minutes. Either way, usually lyrics come last, to make sure they’re exactly presented how we want them.

Being on an indie label, do you have to meet certain expectations, or do you get free reign? For instance, is there any pressure to deliver a song that “sounds” like a single?

FBR [Fueled By Ramen] has been great and believes in us 100%. We recorded our album and paid for it ourselves before we even got signed. I’m sure they’d like us to do well and get huge and have a big radio jam some day, but they know we’re a punk band and not to tell us what to do!

How important do you consider traditional measures of success, such as sales and radio play?

Sales are very important because the numbers are what get good things for bands. The higher the numbers you have, the better the tours, the more money to make touring easier, etc. Sales are down like 99% from what they used to be, though. If you’ve sold 100,000 records, it means probably 2 million have already downloaded it for free. Only weirdos listen to the radio, but hey, it helps.

How do you keep the equation of “career” and “calling” properly balanced? How has the work-to-fun ratio changed as the band has become more popular?

Good question. I think it just kind of happened. As more people started coming to shows and we got on bigger tours, there was more money going around. We went from breaking even, to making enough to “get by” and keep touring. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I can live, just from playing in this band. But I don’t live very extravagantly. I try not to buy expensive things. Just food! It’s a lot more fun, now, actually, than it used to be, because we don’t have to worry about so many things, like will we eat today? Will we have enough gas money to get home? It’s a lot more relaxed. We’re working even harder though now too!

Being on the road so much, are you able to balance your personal life with band business? Is it hard to normalize when you finally get home?

Very hard to normalize when I get home. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do when I’m home. I’m made to play songs and tour. It’s good to see friends, girlfriends, family, and everyone else for awhile though.

What lessons have you learned from being on the road with heavy-hitters like Paramore and Less Than Jake? And is that level of popularity scary or inspiring?

The Paramore and Less Than Jake tours were both two of the biggest tours we’ve done, but they were also very different tours. Paramore plays to mostly “concert-goers” and Less Than Jake plays to “punk rock fans”. Very different people, very different staff and crews on the tour, but both did great things for our band and we loved hanging out with everybody on both. Definitely makes us want to keep working up to that point.

At your shows you talk about playing in real bands with real instruments. Any idea why kids nowadays are more likely to pick up a video game controller than a guitar? What got you started playing music?

Video games are easier than real life, in every aspect. A video game costs less than a real guitar, too. My bro and I started playing music together when we were 9 and 10, so it’s all i’ve known for 13 years. Never went with the trends of what was popular.. just played rock music from day one. Still am, just in front of more people than just my parents. I picked up a guitar so I could play Nirvana songs.

It’s no secret that you and your brother are straight-edge vegans. What made you decide to be straight edge and vegan?

I don’t like the idea of not being able to drive. I don’t like the idea of spending money on drinks that taste like shit. I don’t like the idea of my breath smelling like white trash. I don’t like the idea of contributing to animals being killed for selfish reasons. Hence, the vegan straight edge. Makes me feel good.

You’ve opened for Paramore, Less Than Jake, and pretty soon you’ll be opening for Motion City Soundtrack, is there one band that you haven’t opened up for that you’d like to?

Weezer, Green Day, Jimmy Eat world, Foo Fighters, NOFX, Get Up Kids. I’d like to be with those guys.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given by another band or person in the music industry?

It was from Bill Stevenson when we toured with Only Crime. He was in Black Flag and the Descendants. He said that no matter how many kids are in the crowd that night, even if it’s two, they still could have done ANYTHING they wanted that night, and they came to see your band. So give them a hell of a show.

When you guys start headlining, who are the bands you’d like to have opening up?

A band called Heartsounds from California. Living With Lions, A Wilhelm Scream, Broadway Calls, Cheap Girls from Michigan, just to name a few!

Besides getting boners to stop from having to pee while driving, what are some other crazy/weird/funny things that have happened to you and the guys while on the road?

I just think its crazy, weird, and funny that anyone would like us or our music enough to put a poster of us on their wall. We’re just weirdo kids who play rock songs. Makes me really happy, though. There are too many random and weird moments to really pick just one.. but I think it’s nuts how much we actually drive. Brutal.

I know you guys just came out with a new CD, but are you planning on coming out with anything else in the near future?

Not really the near future, but hopefully early to mid 2011 will be our next record release. Can’t wait. Already writing it.

What’s the end game for The Swellers? At what point can you say, “yup, we’ve done it all now.”

I think the second we stop growing is the second I’ll start thinking of wrapping things up. Don’t wanna beat a dead horse.

(Additional reporting by Third World Timmy.)