Remember the awesomeness that was Nick Lowe, circa 1979? The blazing riffs and sheer muscle of Dave Edmunds? The pop-with-attitude of Elvis Costello, before he became an old-man-singing-slow-classical-doldrummy-bore?
Well, if you look back on those days with happy nostalgia, I’ve got a band to recommend. No, scratch that. I’ve got a band that I insist you listen to.
The Tripwires, on Paisley Pop Records, are fucking awesome. “Makes You Look Around” gets an eleven on a scale of one to ten. John Ramberg (Model Rockets, Minus 5), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, R.E.M.), and sometime REM drummer Bill Rieflin, have teamed up to make an incredibly good rock/pop record, that has the jangle of the Byrds, the grind of R.E.M. . . . And all the best things in guitar rock. Other contributors on the record include Johnny Sangster (engineer for Mudhoney,The Posies), Jim Sangster (Young Fresh Fellows, Sgt Major, The Picketts), drummer Mark Pickerel (Screaming Trees, Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands, Neko Case), and Kurt Bloch (Mudhoney, Supersuckers). All that talent, on one record. Rock and roll truly doesn’t get better than this–it is one of the best records of 2007.
You can hear every track here. Below are a few MP3s to taste, but I can’t tell you forcefully enough how much this album needs to be in your collection. Truly.
