Do you still remember rock and roll radio? Pat Todd And The Rankoutsiders sure do, their new album is built for rock and roll radio with a rhythm section right out of Wyman-Watts songbook, a vocalist in Pat who is like a pub rock denizen from way back and one addictive shot of rock and roll after another through 15 songs of glorious dance music, on 14th And Nowhere.
For 20 years Pat Todd was the lead singer for rocker avatars The Lazy Cowgirls, an L.A. insititution. But they were a local institution who never quite broke out big. Luck of the drawer, right. With the Rankoutsiders, Pat embraces his local phenom ranking and while L.A. isn’t that much of a small town “Small Town Rock And Roll Ain’t Dead” is a call to arm and disarm at the same time; I bet Todd walks around in a state of disbelief when a song as great as this gets no traction. Any band with half an ear would give their arm for a chorus this catchy and smart and the bridge, as it goes down a key in warning and the piano bellows away in the background.
And every single song is this great. My friend Edward Huerta of another L.A band with great buzz, Rockford, pointed em out to me. I owe him one.
This is the real deal folks, Pat and band can do it all. Hell, they can steal the opening lick off “Start Me Up” and make it stick, on the astounding “Back To The Wind”, yet another tuneful, thrilling rocker. I wonder how long it took Pat tow write this album. I can’t hear any filler at all, it is one great rocker after another. If you love this stuff it is absolute heaven, a great achievement.
I would love to see this band live, I would love to hear the country inflections, buried just on the bottom of the slide on “You And Your Damn Dreams”. They don’t make ’em like this any more and why they don’t live in New York is baffling to me. The Ramones would know what I mean, Pat Todd And The Rankoutsiders remember rock and roll radio.
Grade: A