Zebrahead – Phoenix (c) 2008 Icon MusicWow! someone forgot to take their ritalin. Orange County band Zebrahead brings your their fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and maybe eighth releases all on one disc. Ok ok maybe it is technically just their fourth release, but holy crap this disc is all over the place. Because of that I think that it suffers a severe identity crisis. Phoenix carries a sound that is nearly equal parts Rage Against the Machine, 311, Sugar Ray, P.O.D. and not so equal parts of bands so banal that I can’t remember them, only their typical nature. It leaves me to wonder who/what they are attempting to be. I’m not saying it is all bad, just not half good. The musicianship is top notch and the songs are performed admirably. They just don’t know what they want to accomplish sonically (or maybe I’m just not getting the point)… full of sound and fury signifying nothing perhaps. However, if you suffer from short attention span, then perhaps Zebrahead are just the ticket. Phoenix is so incongruous that you just might come away with a whole lot of new favorites.–Jerry Actually
Day: July 9, 2008
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – Have Another Ball (c) 2008 Fat Wreck ChordsDid you ever have to hate your friends or your friend’s sister because they had the K-Tel version of that sweet BTO song you totally loved? Do you remember wtf K-Tel was? Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is a more modern punk rock incarnate of the very same ideals. They take all your favorite songs (originally by the original artist) and they make them better.This time (and the times before) around the joke’s on those K-Tel chumps. Me first and the Gimme Gimmes punk the heck outta those “original classics” For the folk that are familiar, Have Another Ball is the second installment of tracks off of the original recordings from a decade ago. So, if you are indeed familiar, odds are good that you’ve heard a lot of these tracks on other releases. Does it matter that they’ve made better versions of their own versions of other peoples songs? Probably not. Is it still all the same fun punked up karaoke that you were looking for? Most likely… I don’t know what you were looking for, but if it was a punk cover of “Mahogany” or “The Boxer” well then, godammit, this is it. I can’t say it is best of breed, but out of all the cd’s I’m playing right at the very moment, it takes a close second.–Jerry Actually