The Laramie, Wyoming punk rockers Teenage Bottlerocket suffered a massive tragedy in 2015 when their founding member and drummer Brandon Carlisle died unexpectedly. The band had amassed a huge following in the punk scene by then. In time, they forged on with the new drummer Darren Chewka (of The Old Wives) and came back with an excellent LP in 2019.<\/p>\n
This new four-song EP spotlights the difficult year of 2020 for the band, when the world was struggling to progress, and the members\u2019 thoughts are front and center and surrounded by tuneful and infectious songwriting. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo Dumb\u201d opens the listen with razor sharp guitar playing from Ray Carlisle and Kody Templeman alongside Chewka\u2019s thumping drums, as the ultra-melodic and toe tappin\u2019, head bobbin\u2019 formula flows with an energy that has you singing along immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt Wasn\u2019t Enough\u201d follows and places Carlisle on vocals for the rugged approach that\u2019s still plenty harmonic, albeit a little more forceful, where swirling guitars and the hard-hitting rhythm section complement the shouted backing vocals.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a bad tune present, but the final two are the best- maybe the best from the band to date. \u201cSo Stoked\u201d buzzes with Templeman\u2019s smooth pipes guiding the perfect, charged and driving pop-punk formula that makes great use of Migue Chen\u2019s meticulous bass work. \u201cHeart Attack\u201d, the closer, uses the backing ‘woah ohs’ strategically against the very detailed drumming and softer moments that illustrate a rare intimacy present in the genre.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes of top notch pop-punk probably won\u2019t be enough for most of us; thankfully, Teenage Bottlerocket’s back catalog goes back a couple decades, so there\u2019s plenty more to explore. <\/p>\n
For fans of legends like Ramones, Screeching Weasel or The Queers, Teenage Bottlerocket is essential listening, and their perseverance following the loss of Brandon Carlisle is admirable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":34860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10880],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-46727","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-teenage-bottlerocket","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46727","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\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46727"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}