CD Reviews
All Cd Reviews by Al Elio
Al.Elio@BrainDeadMedia.Com
The lyrics write as a confession, an admission, and as always a kick in the balls. “Mean Fist,” the first song on Street Dog’s latest album, “State of Grace,” sets the tone for the rest: a grownup punk method with the same bruising effect. The song is written with a sense of bemused attachment, an acknowledgement of fuckups and the resolve that it’s been too long down the same shitkicking, fun, empty road to change now.

“Three walls and prison bars
Are all I’ll ever know
Love and compassion will become foreign words
And it won’t make a damn bit of difference
If I repent or make amends
Life on the installment plan
Will surely be my death”

Some narrow-minded square bastids will have trouble taking a song, or album, like this seriously. Too distortiony, too wild, too dumb, where’s the Wilco influence, man? If you feel that way, just stop.

The album contains a distinct tinge to it: a headstrong full thrust at making a serious album, while keeping true to punk genealogy, and they succeed. “Into the Valley” is a cerebrally engaging anti-war anthem, and all the more impressive because it lacks the “Fuck Bush/The Man/The Establishment” that most punk resorts to.

“Kevin J. O’Toole” is a good way to send off a good friend, with a searing guitar, The Ever Inspired vocals, and sentimental punches.

The first half of the album is untainted punk, with the guitar going through schizophrenic lapses, one moment screeching in a sortasolo and the next maintaining the throbbing chorus. The bass player, John Rioux, bops in and through it all with a cool tenacity, one that dimly permeates the album like a faint but particular moan of a pornstar. Michael McColgan, formerly of the Dropkick Murphys, has the quintessential punk voice: revolving from a kicking gravel baritone to a swinging, decent melody. It’s best splayed on “Elizabeth,” a song that makes you want to drink a decent Irish brew, slap backs, and howl into the blurry night.

The band plays to their strengths throughout, that being their ability to detach from the damning concept of pure punk. On the last quarter of the album, the inner Irishman seethes from within the band. They use bagpipes, an Irish Day Parade snare, and a swooning style of singing. They don’t stop there, though, and emit a harmonica, a flamenco guitar, and a woman singing.

The last song, “Free,” is a punk’s elucidation, a free-wheeling session on freedom, a fracture with the past. It releases a discharge of tuneful acoustic guitar, a railroad harmonica, and McColgan’s voice dancing in the forefront. It talks about personal and musical troubles, and explains the punk psyche better than just about any other ejaculation of punk thoughts. It’s an appropriate way to slam the door.

By forgoing the full-fledged punk attitude, the band’s appeal orifice is slit open, and with a few more breaks they could become a legitimate force. One of the reasons, other than cultural ADD, that punk has failed in reaching a more vast audience is their self-inflicted alienating sound. Most bands know what creatures are going to prey on their music, and are content with that. But with State of Grace, Street Dogs manage to not betray their punk roots and still progress, even if it means a few suburban shitheads will listen to it.

Overall: 8.5/10

Street Dogs
State Of Grace
Release Date: July 8 2008
Hellcat Records
Pepper’s latest effort, Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations, came out July 22. It is the group’s fifth studio album, and the third from their label, Law Records, which is an extension of drummer Yesod Williams’ father’s 80’s hair metal band. Their schizophrenic slew of styles, reggae, rock, hip hop, comes together well and musically it is their best effort. The biggest problem, however, is that the lyrics could either come from a C-student 4th grader with a Rhyming Dictionary or a stoned YouTube junkie who names their dog Marley and quotes Bukowski.

The album opens with “Freeze,” and grooves forward from there. They open with a swinging, melodic guitar and Kaleo Wasserman weaving his rap/talk style through. The chorus is a sudden explosion of “FREEZE” and a spaceship launch, before its crescendo back into the verse.

Pepper’s best song on the album, “Wet Dreams,” is their greatest musical accomplishment on the album: they’re able to break free from sounding like a Sublime cover band and into their own sound. The song leads with a low pitched, slightly distorted guitar that sounds spacey and magnificent; the vocals ditch imitation and furrow along perfectly for the tone of the song. The only problem are the lyrics:

Say to me now, you've never had your heart broken
Don't believe you, as far as I can throw you
I know it hurts too much, the fact that she'll leave you
You messed up my clothes
You're falling asleep, for now

Most of the album follows suit, with the music an eclectic stew of varying styles and influences, with a squealing guitar intermittently weaved between a pounding, steady drum rhythms and steady bass glue. They rarely stray from this style, probably because it’s what they’ve mastered: the ability to create a funky, catchy song with light-hearted overtones that stay with you like crabs. They seem to be trying to recreate the success of their hit song, “Ashes,” and make valiant efforts to do it. But no song on the album is as catchy or radio-conscious as “Ashes” was.

Overall, the album’s a decent attempt to make a simple, fun album that their dedicated fan base can smoke and drive to on a summer moonlight drive. The lyrics seemingly lack any talent or effort: they sound like the drunken mumblings of a confused jock.  Their Sublime influence teeters on the treacherous edge between homage and ripping their sound off, which may turn people off (or they’ll say fuck it, music’s music and everybody steals from everybody.)  Overall, they succeed in their effort.

Overall: 6.5/10

Best Song: Wet Dreams

Pepper
Pink Crustaceans and Good Vibrations
July 22, 2008
Law Records

Money converted, the value of the money remains the same. P.F. Flyers for fence jumping and ass-hauling. The love of your life treading sand in your periphery, your spawn following suit. Glance left before right, constantly imitating the eye of a hawk as it glides about in the sky above the great brown and red Southern Border.

Calexico’s newest album, Carried to Dust (Touch and Go Records), is a perfect soundtrack for crossing the border, even as an anthem of trading in American radio-vomit for the exotic spices of Mexican influence. Their 6th studio album, and first since their notion-shattering collaboration with Iron and Wine, shows that they can concoct a valuable album without Sam Beam’s aid.

Calexico’s music is an audibly pulsating fusion of influences and styles, ranging from pure rock formats, to folk singing and guitar, to South of the Border flavor. They manage to intrinsically maintain this doggy bag of styles and keep from the songs being cheap clones of one another.

The album opens with “Victor Jara’s Hands,” a song at its solar plexus a mellow tune, but adding hip-shifting rhythm and an intermittent group of merry Mariachis. The words would spill out in English, then Spanish, pouring out in whatever tongue is native at the particular juncture.  The song is outlined with the softly fluctuating, sailing voice of lead singer Joey Burns: the voice permeates the album without adding self-aggrandizing forced gravel or the squished-balls excessive high notes, but holds the album together with the spongy melodies.

The songwriting is at its raw and cryptic best on the album’s best song, “Two Silver Trees.”

False sense of warning no poisoned cup
Just deception crawling up like a snake
Decay of the blossoms and roots well hacked
Spoil the hidden waters dying at the base of
Two silver trees, two silver trees
Two worlds in need, two silver trees

Branches falling down
From sources underground
False identities
Stranded in each single seed

The lyrics are perfectly consistent with the music throughout, contemplative and finding the middle ground between a mellow yet intense thought or situation.

“Inspiracion” is distinctly Mexican, with two Spanish voices tangoing wildly to the kept beat of knocking Maracas, the same Restaurant Mariachis playing an after desert encore and a muffled, vengeful electric guitar buzzing contained in the periphery. “Et Gatillo” is the ultimate border crossing song, a pounding and calculating acoustic guitar, a bald, bold and pronounced electric guitar keeping lookout with the horn section lifting you over the fence.

The album is pure Calexico, the perfect showcase of their various uses of instruments and style, an unadultered and no-bullshit showcase of what it is they do. Indie loyalists will try and crucify this band as their own brand, but Calexico is independent without the rimmed-glassed hipster Indie bullshit. An album to pick up if you’re looking for a departure from whiney crooners and slightly distorted guitars.

Overall: 9/10

Calexico
Carried to Dust
September 8, 2008
Touch & Go Records