Despite the fact that my driver's license says otherwise, I remain a total kid at heart, for better and worse. Part of being a kid, for me at least, was discovering a great new record by some cool rock band and telling all my friends about it. Hell, if not for my unshakable need to do so, this here blog would probably not exist.
Of course, my faithful readers know that it has been an eternity since the last time I came running in with such a huge smile on my face, shiny new album in-hand! Today, though, my musical heart has been awakened from one helluva slumber by Chicago band Farewell Captain and their amazing new record, Won't Risk An Explosion.
The album opens in perfect fashion with the nitro-burning "Jumpstarted". Full of jittery hooks and hyperactive stops and starts, this is a tune tailor-made for the concert stage. Not too hard to imagine how awesome a track like will sound after braving three shitty opening bands and a half dozen or so $2 domestic brews.
Where a lesser record might allow the listener to catch their breath at this point, "You Don't Know When Enough Is" merely ups the ante with a blistering tempo, some kitschy-cool backing vocals, and a freight-train-of-a-chorus that Rivers Cuomo would kill to call his own. Our choice for first single!
While the first four tracks out of the shoot constitute quite the musical one-two (three-four) punch, don't think Farewell Captain aren't also masters of dynamics. Good bands are more than capable of delivering one guitar-driven piledriver after another, but it is a great band that knows enough to vary the tempos, change brushes, and dabble in some of the other colors on the rock & roll palette.
That's where songs like the aching "Spanish Face" and the Elliot Smith-esque "Stop Asking For Everything" separate Farewell Captain from the pack.
In advance of its proper release, the band is streaming the album in its entirety. Click HERE to check out the tunes.
Never mind that the music industry itself lies in a state of shambles, shortsightedly shoveling shit to the masses, rejoice that albums like this still exist. They may never go triple-platinum (although stranger things have happened), but they will long outlive the here-today-gone-later-today crap that fills our head space if we let it. If so inclined after listening, I urge those in the Chitown area to show this band some love...the rest of you, pay it forward...however you can.