Your healthy dose of pure Rock n Roll. This would fit perfectly in the early 2000’s scene, making company to such acts as The Vines, Jet, !!!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, White Stripes (their “Fell in love with a girl” version), to name some of the bands of the time that went a little dirtier, closer to punk, than The Strokes, who were right in the middle between these guys and others such as Interpol, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the more sophisticated, less punk, White Stripes.
It’s been more than a couple years since I have listened to the likes of The Vines and early Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but not so much for the latter bands. “Fell in love of a girl”, awesome as it was the first time I listened to it, now makes me feel kind of bored and even though it’s quite short, today I tend to skip it and go straight to the juicier tracks. BRMC and Interpol are still occasional listens though.
So this might seem to imply that I didn’t care much for these Cab 20 guys. Not true though. Chanelled through the above described nostalgic feel I get from listening to it, this Cactus EP stuff strikes me as important stuff. If I had a son stuck deep in Depressing Folk, Electronic experimentation, Post-Rock etc., I would force him to listen to this so he could grow a pair, because that’s how I felt listening to those bands after years of Radiohead and their imitators. I feel rock is more comfortable freeing people from boredom and their pedantic tendencies anyhow, and that’s why I like this EP. In short and going back to the first sentence, it’s pure Rock n Roll, and that’s fucking awesome.
Now to the EP itself. It’s very well recorded, these guys have majored in the art of distorted rock guitar riffs, but the best thing here might actually be the bass. The bassist is the shit. This guy makes everything groovier and cooler. The many instrumental bridges and solos are very pleasing, all the instruments dialogue pretty well together etc., but pay attention to the bass, it shall set you free.
And now for some unreasonable expectations. I don’t think this has the punch to change rock like all those fellows above did, at least not the way it is right now. I have just took a peak at how these guys were reviewed by other people and everyone always goes for dadrock comparisons, which makes it seem even more dated than my 10 year old references, and that’s already a lot. You really have to add something new and exciting to the pack, or else there really is no reason to listen to your music instead of just dusting off your old records. I’ll elaborate:
These guys should go for one of these two routes: they can either go straight to metal, which they already have a foot in, because metal is so fucking awesome who cares if it’s dated, or they should come up, somehow, with their own brand of rock n roll revival and become huge as the sun. As it stands now, it sounds more like it comes from guys obsessed with music, technically very competent musicians, but lacking almost completely in innovation and originality. I see nothing, absolutely nothing that challenges me here, nothing to keep me interested in the long run. It’s fun enough now, but it needs something else to be truly great.
Anyhow, Cactus, the third track, is great, don’t leave here without checking it out.
-Carpeaux
inb4track 