Hailing from Pere Ubu's industrial Cleveland, Ohio heartland, young whippersnappers GHOST TOWN TRIO are a drilled and cranked pop-punk trio who play it straight and true over the course of this brevity-fuelled 7-tracks-in-23-minutes affair.
Led from the front by guitarist/vocalist Andy Cook, with a supple rhythm section of Garyn Jones (bass) and Justin Mitchell (drums - this latter now replaced by Ryan Tyhulski, according to their MySpace) sliding in behind, GT3 are very much the modern day guardians of the get-in-the-van, hard-working hardcore US acts of the late '80s/early '90s such as Husker Du and The Replacements who - lest we forget - blazed the breakthrough trail for Nirvana and their ilk.
I don't know for sure, but one gets the feeling that this no-nonsense approach probably translates into the band's studio sessions. 'Lose Your Voice' sounds powerful and oozes clarity, for sure, but also ensures the frills are locked in the panic room for the duration. The opening title track gives you a good idea what to expect: insistent and tight with trebly guitars to the fore, twangy basslines and crisp drumming lighting matches under the arse of the melody and a gleefully passionate Cook screaming his lungs out very nicely indeed.
The remainder turn equally impressive tricks, with tunes like 'My Hands Are On Fire' and the amusingly-titled 'This Guitar Makes Friends (And Kills Fascists)' celebrating the life of a hard-working band on tour and giving vigorous nods to both The Replacements and early Clash (in the omnipresent, Mick Jones-style "who-oh-oh"s) as they lob beer cans and career along the way. Elsewhere, they prove they have an above-average grasp of dynamics, too, with both the chugging, Fugazi-style menace of 'The Long Of The Night' and the coiled, Ruts-like explosions of 'The Roof Caves In' sticking in the memory long after the album's wound down. This latter, too, appears to be an anti-Iraq tirade, if I'm correctly reading Cook's tirade and lyrics like "your morals don't mean shit anymore."
|
The one place they wheel out some extra muscle is with the 'punk choir' terrace chorus of the defiant closer 'Rudimentary Ideas' - a celebration of the DIY ethic if ever there was - but really 'Lose Your Voice' screams itself hoarse on snappy, steroided-up pop-punk and reminds us that there's always room for this snotty, raging-against-the-dying-of-the-light stuff whatever the precarious state of the world. One can only hope no-one in the band suffers from the smelly sock syndrome that allegedly sank Husker Du in the end, because America's highways are all the richer for their van's continuing presence right now.
|
