Artist - Thunderbirds Are Now!
Album - Justamustache
Label - French Kiss
Reviewer - Chris Pacifico
Motor City may be burning but the glorious days of the MC5 are long gone as the torch has just been passed to Thunderbirds Are Now! who fan the flames on their third and best yet effort Justamustache. This Detroit spazz-out quartet goes absolutely apeshit with a sound that merges abrasive punk fury with a massive dram of screeching keyboards and synthesizers courtesy of Scott Allen who is the mad sonic genius of TAN! While remaining hard-hitting and melodic TAN! seem like four guys who are on fifty cups of espresso at all time with a bouncy sound that still adheres to the aura of the dirty oil-stained garages that their civic counterparts such as The Stooges and Mitch Ryder played in all while being fronted by the snotty yelp of singer/guitarist Ryan Allen.
The romping “Better Safe Than Safari” cheers on like chaotic pep rally with an added helping of heavy spunk as the bubbly ruckus in “From: Skulls” would be the ideal exercise song if there was ever a workout DVD entitled Aerobics for Meth Addicts. Of course if you play in a band with a synthesizer player and you hail from a city that launched the American techno revolution with icons such as Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, the said genre will tend to rub off on your musical decorum as it does with the booming conniption of “198090”.
Even those good old days where the world lived at the whims of Ronald Regan’s icy heart are brought back with some bastardized new wave dance punk that would kick the ass of any artist who reigned supreme in the early days of MTV. The go-go tinged “Eat This City” screeches like a set of car keys being grinded against a chalk board as the rock-steady grooves emitted from bassist Howard Chang keeps things moving in “Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About Me”. Of course the great Gang of Four is brought to mind with the totally spiky “(Aquatic Cupid’s) Harpoons of Love” as is the vibe of Kid A (if it were just a little bit more eerie) with the strident arty trot and intermittent death-disco beats in “Bodies Adjust”. If Iron Maiden were just a little bit more funkier with their instrumentation they would no doubt be putting out tracks like “To: Skulls” as the echoing guitar twang rests alongside the madness of stickman Michael Durgen giving his drums the type of beating that a loan shark gives to a deadbeat. Be sure to stick around for the staccato chaos of “This World is Made of Paper Held Together By a Stapler” and the high pitched bedlam in “Cobra Feet”.
Thunderbirds Are Now has released what it quite possibly the greatest album of 2005 that is absent from the hype-radar of mainstream music media. It jars and rattles your nerves to the point of a nervous breakdown with a sound that is edgy and filled to the brim with erratic punk musings that makes Justamustache an album that you can either mosh or dance along with.
