The Bad Ends Deliver Straight-ahead College Rock Tunes on ‘The Power And The Glory’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Before there was Seattle, there was Athens, GA. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s you were hard pressed to find a smaller U.S. town with as many brilliant bands growing out of one scene. For every globally revered band like The B-52s and R.E.M., there were groups like Pylon, Love Tractor and Widespread Panic – just as talented just not as well known by the masses. And that music scene still thrives today.

So, it seems only natural that one of the next great supergroups would come out of Athens. The Bad Ends – comprised of R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry, Five Eight’s Mike Mantione, Josh Joplin Group’s Geoff Melkonian, Dave Domizi and Christian Lopez – is that group.

While their debut, The Power And The Glory, is not necessarily treading new ground, it is still a remarkably satisfying collection of straight-ahead college rock songs. Mantione’s vocals are solid, but it’s the unexpected lyrical turns that almost all of the songs take that make the band so compelling. Even the most mundane scenarios like trying to find a friend in the crowd at a show, take an unexpected turn with Mantione singing about all of their buddies suddenly dying one by one (“All Your Friends Are Dying”). Musically the band can dig into the crunchy distorted power chords on a brilliant rocker like “The Ballad Of Satan’s Bride” or unplug on a heartbreaking track like “Little Black Cloud.”   

The Power And The Glory initially started as a solo record for Mantione, but quickly morphed into something bigger when he and Berry started jamming with friends. But the joy of stumbling into a new band still had a shadow of sadness that can be heard on some of these songs. “It was one of the happiest times, but I found myself tuning into the suffering around me and wanting to help family through their hardest times,” Mantione said recently. “One afternoon, a close friend committed suicide. He left two sons fatherless. He was there for me years before, and he’d helped so many other people who wondered what happened. I doubled down on getting my life together and started writing and making music with a vengeance.” 

The result is raw with emotion but wrapped in a comforting sound that should be familiar to anyone who grew up on bands like R.E.M., The Smiths or The Feelies. A bit nostalgic? Sure, but that does nothing to take away from how good the music is here.

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One Response

  1. This album hasn’t been off this old man’s turntable for two weeks. It’s nostalgic noise from 1995, with the lament of someone that has lived every one of the 28 years since then.

    Brilliant, brilliant record.

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