Kentucky's finest is a chick/guy vocal share up on some tough but tender pop tunes. Maybe where Elastica meets Paramore plus a bit of X. It is garage rock, or rock straight outta the garage. And has all the strength and excitement of a band discovering they can do it as well. And they can. Listen to em do it. Though on a coupla songs they kinda misss, most of these tracks are exactly what they should be.
Their first album, Celebrasion, is a smart packing of potential hits in an alternative nation. Though I am less admiring of their first single "Call The Doctor" , the very next song "Force A Smile" has the seductive come on "All I wanna do is lay with you" -this is a very sexy song, with the traded vocals and the come on so hard above a chewy bubbly garage sound. Actually, it is a wonder of pop construction, they strum up the guitars to a roar and quiet em to one on the verses: it is like the pulse of sexual excitement replete with fake ending, it is the thrill of the album.
"Shuga Cane" spplits the difference, the verses are average guitar swamp but the chorus, a cool lift but I can't remember who from, is a sweetness propeller. The two fit together but only just.
There seems to be two major subject matters here:
1. Love
2. Sex.
And really, what do a bunch of teens need more than that.
These guys are just getting strated but they are on to something. The slower "Call Me Baby" with Alex Kandel and Tony Smith trading lines before they harmonize is a sound you don't get every day. It appears obvious but it isn't. The raucuousness of a band that lists Wavves as an influence seldom ends itself in deep swamp laand, or deep garage, they flutter on the outskirts because at heart there is a pop thing going on: they fly when they give into melody.
Both singers are very strong and while there is, asalways, someting a little forgotten manish about the rest of the band, they are a tight band nicely anchored underneath. You hear the guitar lick on "Be My Monster" but it's really thedrummer, Justin Wilson, holding it together as they change pace.
Alex is 18, the rest of the band in their early 20s. They've got time to perfect it, to break Paramore big. And they well may. In the interim songs like "Forced Smile" and the penutimate "All Wave And No Goodbye" are waiting for nothing whatsoever. Grade: B+
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