PISTOL GRIP
ANOTHER ROUND
BYO
LINKS:
byo
"We're the proud and the putrid and we're gonna wreck this town…" reads an integral line to "A Murder Of Crows" and really the underlying factor to the music of Pistol Grip--bullet the bullshit and break free. An LA-based post-punk, and we'll call 'em "post" for the moment seeing as how they've successfully side-stepped the mislabeled pop stars in punk poses and gone the way of the rebel raider of a twenty year gone rude generation from the far side of Brixton--with a lengthy list of wordy fist-pump anthems to raise your glass, ire, or voice to.
"Another Round" is the next round for the '97 start-ups who do songs that question authority, lament lost souls, and possess that all-important air of unity and bloodletting-self-indulgence for as much as sixteen hours studio time will buy. PG sports solid playing and a harmonic discourse that only a fivesome can produce, and with it, an underlying choral unity for added "whoa-oh-oh" effect amongst the "If The Kids Are United" brand of suburban street preach. Pistols in the air for "Sweet & Sour Of A Knife," "Empty Shells," "1997," "Marshburn Ave" and the downtrodden "The Rebels Are Dead." And while no previous player is long safe amongst the many, a new crew of misfits looking to earn a rank off the popularized version of anarchic discourse, I'm hearing a lot more of The Business, The Distillers, Youth Brigade, than I am a commercialized hybrid-please everyone-at-once-product that's conveniently punk at one turn, on their knees the next. Another Round is a rigid, occasionally watery, but overall satisfying and believable enough middle of the road ol' school style offering with more character than most.

----Vinnie Apicella