This new band out of San Francisco have it down. They know we are in times of Royal Panic and we need to power of Rock and Roll to save us from the nightmare unfolding around us.
This came with a wonderfully sparse press release whose only real claim is that the band are The Bay's Premier Rock and Roll Ambassadors and play at the Bottom Of the Hill, which for those not in the know is a cracking live venue that I went to for a Horrorpops show the last time I was in town.
The album opens with the angry Sucker Of The Century about some idiot who thinks he's seen It all but had probably missed all the important stuff along the way unfolding over almost power pop vocals and a hard edged indie rock backing that sounds urgent enough to be cool.
Every Little Thing continues in a similar vein being angry at all the people he meets who think they have the answers but probably don't even know what the question is yet. I Swam To An Island is part reality TV trope gone wrong and part the need to swim across the bay to Alcatraz just to impress a girl only to find one of the inmates wants to hold you down to watch you drown. From all this, somehow they have created a really catchy song.
Anti Anti-Machine may nick most of its tune off of a Steve Wynn song but that's all it nicks and the premise of the Anti Anti Machine is a perfect summation of the mess we are in even if I am singing along to a different chorus - so familiar are parts of the tune. But damn it's a great tune.
Oh dear they have been stuck watching Girls Of NYC and they have to rant about it and tell us what they think of those girls. In places, this song sounds a bit like The Wildhearts we all know the anger and bile is being spat at the daughters and grand-daughters of the girls that Johnny Thunders sang about living in New York's Children's Zoo.
Green Was The Colour is not a Paddy's Day tune - more a sweet little love song about beauty and the lust they feel for her before all the envy kicks in as she isn't. This sounds like Paul Westerberg could have written it.
New Year's Blues opens like Beki Bondage's version of The Boys Are Back In Town before veering off into a wry song about New Year's Day being just another day, so it doesn't memorialize the awful end of House Of Freaks' Bryan Harvey and his family, but with a good video it could easily become a standard new year's day Youtube share as a good way to hit that hangover where it hurts.
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Best Part Of You sounds like it's going to be a Dramarama style kiss-off song and it really doesn't disappoint on that front. It's a cool little tune and you'll be singing the chorus the second time you hear it as it's rather infectious before they have the weird little breakdown that could symbolize a break up. But then the chorus comes back in and everyone is singing again and happy.
Book V Movie puts that old argument into song. What do you prefer, the book or the movie? And what happens in-between. It's a bit stop and start as a way of emphasising things have been taken apart and will be put back together again but different as most adaptations do.
P.B.R. could be about me as the initials stand for Pretentious bearded radical or just about a bunch of bearded hipster twats who think they have the answers as the world crumbles around us while they sup on that watery piss that is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Jesus, does anyone drink that swill anymore? Well, not on this side of the pond they don't.
The album closes with the urgent A Special Party. Now is this the sort of party you want to be at or one that turns to a nightmare as he begs and pleads to take someone to a special party. It works really well with a riff nicked from (I think) Demolition 23 and in parts the lyrics could be a cleaner but far more troublesome version of The Quireboys' Sex Party as I try to decode what the Special part of this party is.
Either way a good way to end a really cool rock meets Powerpop album which is very easy to get into. Find out more at The Royal Panics online
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