Also off pitchfork. Lazy days!
I had heard of these guys and had a good feeling, but had never heard them. They're awesome, and I listened to this album on my way to work for about a week.
Let's get this out of the way, Pink Eyes has one gear, and it is gutteral, desperate, last-note-ever shouting, thundering out of a big-dude body and a dead-dude throat. That leads the whole thing to a very hardcore sound. But then the rest is just fucking amazing, deft, melodic guitar work, with all the hooks of the best pop-punk, with the production chops of the best shoegaze, landing somewhere between the French sheen of Phoenix and the midwest grit of The Hold Steady. There's even a touch of pretty girl vocals here and there, giving the whole thing an extra lighthearted, joyous dimension.
Want a sense of it? Try early standout Under My Nose, which gives you all the elements in a minute: green day chops into layered chiming Mogwai guitars, the entire thing chugging with relentless post-Buzzcocks, night-train-running-on-empty postive energy.
In fact, that's one of the main themes here, this album is relentless. The hits just keep coming. Pink Eyes shreiks "where the fuck is the other shoe?" and is answered by the next song, The Other Shoe, which begins "rat tat tat here's the other shoe!" But then two songs later, he's shouting about the other shoe again. That's the secret of life, there's always another shoe, so you better learn to stop worrying about the drops. Meanwhile, the album goes forward with pulsing, chugging, chiming, shouting for 70 minutes with narry a break, on and on and on. It's kind of incredible 4.5/5
You might like this if: First, can you put up with shouty, hardcore, no-note vocals? If you can, and you like guitars and riffs and grit and heart and joy, then you probably need to give this a try.
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