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Review: 'EUREKA CALIFORNIA'
'Roadrunners'   

-  Label: 'Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '4th May 2018'-  Catalogue No: 'HHBTM 193'

Our Rating:
Eureka California are back. This is their fourth full-length record over the 10 years they've been together and for my ears it's like they have distilled their two-piece set up down to its essence and just honed the lo-fi indie rock until there is no waste anywhere. On this album, none of the 14 songs are longer than 3 minutes 33 seconds so you have no time to get restless.

The album was recorded in Leeds with MJ from Hookworms just before they finally became flavour of the month last year. Oh, and yes, this band are perfect to be a part of the thriving Yorkshire scene even though they come from Athens Georgia.

The opening blasts of MK Ultra strafes your ears like a well-honed missile. The guitar fires your brains and the drums just keep us all running along making sure we listen to what Jake Ward's singing about and it ain't a good time.

Perfect Grammar is a blitz of guitars and lyrics about what expectations you may or may not have left when you're never sure if you can afford to carry on. Threads finds the guitars sounding like they have been strung slightly looser to give that wobbly sound, with loads of echo and effects to match the tsunami the panic and horror they see around them while touring, all the while hoping to make enough to cover the costs of being a band. But no, they won't take the nuclear option.

Time After Time After Time After Time is a jangle-pop shoegaze classic in the style of The Wedding Present with less sardonic sounding vocals and more urgent drumming. Over It does what you'd expect of it with a great repeating riff and bile laden lyrics spat at the person you're over now.

I Can't Look In Your Direction could be about an ex but apparently concerns many of the talking heads on TV babbling lies and nonsense as well as the politicians doing the same with drums that sound like Marie A. Uhler is personally hitting the object of her ire as much as Jake's vocals are being screamed at that person.

Howard Hughes At The Sands is as good a subject for a song these days as any as the billionaires close themselves off from the rest of us. This has a quiet almost dub shoegaze part with some great cymbal work before the lyrics really get going and his jokes are going over our heads.

Buffalo Bills 1990-1993 is, I'd guess, a song about the Prozac, ecstasy, Xanax years as much as about some sports team and as it's an instrumental I'll stick to that. JJT is a furious piece of drumming with splenetic guitars, rage-filled vocals and lyrics written by Marie rather than Jake that flies by in just over a minute.

SWDs sounds like some moral or social disease set to freak scene guitars to try to make us care about people who you have no reason to care about. It sounds like they are running away from something in a chase scene through some urban ghetto.

Gila Monster is about as power-pop as this band ever get and this is also twangy in places. A cool I want you but I don't really want you song. Telephone Tone deserves to be the ringtone of the year - go on stick this on your phone as a ringtone and watch in horror at the reaction when your phone goes off and he describes being with someone with all the charm of A Telephone tone.

How Long Has This Been Going On? Well, so far, 20 something minutes. Oh you mean your lifestyle the never ending tour to just about get by and make ends meet or not? This is pondered through this cloud of guitars until the jangles break out at the end.

The album closes with Mexican Coke. Yes the drink not the powder. But this is a monumental slab of SST-style neo-grunge pop. It sounds like something off the No Alternative Comp or The International Pop Underground Convention album. As a band now they would really fit into those scenes and this album is for anyone into that kind of Alternative rock.

If you know of any UK Promoters who want to put this lot on during their upcoming UK tour in July get in touch with them at: Eureka California Facebook Page

Buy the album at:
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records
  author: simonovitch

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EUREKA CALIFORNIA - Roadrunners