The Tripwires
"Makes You Look Around" CD
Paisley Pop
Genre: pop, rock
Seattle, WA
Nov 12, 2008 |
In The Minus 5, lead guitarist John Ramberg was forced
to take a back seat to main songwriter
Scott McCaughey. Certainly, McCaughey
is no slouch, but it makes sense that eventually Ramberg
would want to try heading something up on
his own. This
brings us to The Tripwires, an admirable pop band with a
penchant for churning out classic, even old-fashioned hooks. As the
press release will attest to, Makes You Look Around is a rock &
roll record, but it is the pop that bleeds
through most blatantly.
The best way to conceptualize this record is to examine its
influences. A lot of Makes You Look Around seems heavily predicated on
a Big Star influence; "I Don't Care Who You Are" and "I Hear
This Music" exude a joyous Radio City influence (think
"September Gurls," most obviously), while "Lessonpony" and "Arm
Twister" have the melodic quality of Bell and Chilton's
more rock-heavy material. The album's two most successful songs,
meanwhile, succeed due to their undeniable infectiousness. "Big
Electric Light" is a massive, blast-it-from-the-rooftop pop anthem,
steeped in AM pop melody but endowed with a modern glisten. Meanwhile,
"Spins the Wrong Way" is destined to be
hummed eternally - its sinewy verse revels in melodic bliss, although
the chorus can't match its simple beauty.
Taken together, Makes You Look Around is a pretty stunning
pop record, as far as pop records go. Relying heavily on the past,
Ramberg has penned a series of twelve catchy songs (excluding the
Chuck Berry cover), some of which rock and some of which are
more inclined to roll. The results are
purely entertaining. The Tripwires may not defy convention, but
they do a hell of a job playing by the rules.
the
tripwires' myspace
83%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 13 tracks, distributed by
the
label,
released Nov 12, 2007] |
