Wipe the slate clean. Ray Davies has dawned over rock’s new millennium. Davies, formerly of The Kinks, is a complicated, socially conscious musician, who delivers his message by drawing from a mount of musical styles.
Despite the hardcore backbone, their style of punk is less harsh and melodramatic, more refreshing, positive, and sincere.
Welcome the next Oklahoma-bred catastrophe, Hinder.
This past September, Fivespeed was featured on Stuff Magazines
If you’re really in the mood for this kind of thing, do yourself a favor and put in some Television, Velvet Underground or Stooges.
Beginning with the band’s 2001 eponymous debut, the Memphis, Tenn. quartet has maintained an irreverent blend of country and punk that, over time, has been blurred into a very cohesive and organic coupling.
Capturing the sound of Minneapolis bands like the Replacements and Husker Du, The Hold Steady are lead by Craig Finn’s Kerouac-like observations. The Brooklyn band’s songs radiate with nightlife energy and vivid characters you
The Moistboyz are loud, punchy, no frills rock ‘n roll filled with pissy lyrics and
muddy guitars distorted beyond recognition. But what is left out of this picture is a band trying very hard to separate themselves from their “primary” acts – Ween and The False Front.
It goes without saying that Nada Surf’s brand of punk-pop-rock should have them paired with today’s hot ticket melodic rock bands like Death Cab for Cutie and The Shins. Their latest release- The Weight is a Gift – may be their ticket back to the forefront.
The idea of passing up the simple but commercially effective strategy of retrofitting 80s New Wave for mass consumption by the pierced-face audiences of today may be a tough thing for goal-oriented techno bands to consider, but Backandtotheleft appears content to keep the musical company of such EBM purists as Cesium 137 and Angels+Agony.
