Before he was an acclaimed novelist and Hollywood director, Dito Montiel led the band Gutterboy. Signed by Geffen in the late \u201880s, the band was put together with various recruits from NYC hardcore bands. Gutterboy was a good-looking macho sort of group that looked like they belonged on the runway and not onstage. Consequently, the pretty boy schtick didn\u2019t sell and the guys were dumped. Several members left, but the band somehow scored another major label deal and went to work on their second self-titled album. By this time, they had added a female member on acoustic guitar and vocals and had salvaged several songs from their departed members in order to have enough material.<\/p>\n
The intro to \u201cShe Gone\u201d contains sax and a folk sort of feel, with Dito singing in a Lou Reed tone. The song is interesting, but it feels like the band is trying way too hard to impress and be cool and pop-sounding in a Nirvana and Pearl Jam world. This track might have worked on \u201880s pop radio, but by 1992, it was laughable and had no place in the music landscape at all. <\/p>\n
Dito takes on an almost Springsteen vibe on \u201cEvery Other Night,\u201d a cut that wouldn\u2019t have been out of place on one of his \u201880s records. Again, it just doesn\u2019t work and leaves a reviewer wondering if the band was going through some sort of musical crisis trying to find the right sound that would make them money and get them on the radio. Clearly, the band tried too hard and didn\u2019t think about trying to make something timeless and natural. Instead, they just ripped a lot of other artists off and ended up with a record that was stuck in a late \u201880s timeframe with sax, modest punk rock, and annoying female vocals.<\/p>\n
A few tracks like \u201cKiss Me\u201d and \u201cClose By\u201d actually work a bit and would\u2019ve been better suited if Dito had ditched the band and recorded a solo acoustic record. Then these songs might\u2019ve had some real life to them and would still work twenty-five years later. Only two cuts here actually still work: \u201cLet\u2019s Get Lost\u201d comes across as a yearning folk song that still holds up except for the lame sax solo that tries to ruin things, while \u201cBus Stations And Train Yards\u201d is a song that is comparable to the work of Tim Barry or Brian Fallon. So kudos to the band for actually making something that sounds timeless and still works.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the sound of this record fell on deaf ears and Gutterboy quickly disbanded for good. At least this record had two really good tracks that still have stood through time and make this release not completely useless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":33440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10145],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-45258","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gutterboy","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45258"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45258"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}