| Reviews:
Feb 2004
|
| Small
Brown Bike 'The River Bed' (Lookout Records) **** http://www.smallbrownbike.com/ After their previous amazing full length cd ('dead reckoning'), this could have been an anti-climax. What you get here is a slightly more moody offering, which has a great deal of power and emotion. Gone is the previous pre-occupation with duel vocals, replaced now with a slightly more commercial sound. A great hardcore album! This band rekindled my passion for loud, aggressive and passionate music. You need to own at least one Small Brown Bike release. Shame they've split up now though... |
| Reggie
and the Full Effect 'under the tray...' (Vagrant Records) 3.5/5 http://www.reggieandthefulleffect.net Well, it starts off like a lame version of a BOWLING FOR SOUP cd. In fact 2 minutes in I almost put this on ebay! I'm glad I carried on. What you get is a glorious mix of punk/hardcore/new wave styles all played with a tongue-in-cheek approach. Looks like it took about 12 months to record this, and my guess is it was done in four different frames of mind. You could quite easily get four different sounding e.p's from this and pass them off with different band names. That's not a criticism it's nice to hear someone who's not confined to one approach. At points you get flavours of FINCH then it changes to THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS then onto REEL BIG FISH. With tracks like 'drunk girl at the Get up Kids show' and 'Canadians switching the letter P for the letter V Eh?' I guess you get the idea of what to expect. A great album which will put a smile on your face. And yes....the CD does come under the tray. |