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BANDS: Punk
& Ska INTERESTS: Venues ETC... About
LOTD
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Bill Janovitz
& Crown Victoria: Fireworks on TV!
As an admitted longtime fan of Buffalo Tom, I jumped at the chance to review Bill Janovitzs new release with Crown Victoria, Fireworks on TV! On first listen, the hooky melodies, urgent vocals, and driving guitars brought a smile to my face, and I thought to myself, This couldnt possibly be a Bill Janovitz side project! It sounds just like a Buffalo Tom album! But if thats the case, why didnt I have the uncontrollable urge to play this album over and over and over again, like I did with BTs 1993 album Big Red Letter Day and especially 1992s Let Me Come Over? I look at these old college rock albums as underappreciated classics. Buffalo Tom was too often compared to its Boston contemporaries and friends in Dinosaur Jr, often being labeled by smartass critics as Dinosaur Jr Jr. But in my opinion, when it came to songwriting alone, Bill Janovitz could write circles around J Mascis. I still play these old Buffalo Tom albums often, and the timeless songs on them seem to hold as much relevance to me now as they did in the early 90s. So again, if this new album sounds so much like Buffalo Tom, whats missing? Well, its hard to pinpoint, but much like the later Buffalo Tom albums, the noisy guitar distortion of yesteryear has been traded in for a cleaner guitar sound and smoother production. There are no real moments of absolute chaos and beautiful recklessness, where the band is unworried about making the perfect song they wrote sound perfect; and it is this exact quality that made the early Buffalo Tom albums so great. Its almost as if this more tailored approach sucks the punk attitude right out of the songs. The problem is not with the songs on this release; in fact, as songs alone, some of these tracks are fantastic. A good example is Almost Beating. The song itself has the same emotional nostalgia and hook as some of the best Buffalo Tom songs, but right when you expect the guitars to go wild with distortion and feedback and the drums to go crazy, you instead get a nice, neat guitar solo and some color-by-numbers percussion. Again on Sinking, we have the same problem. This song comes closer, but the gloriously reckless noise has unfortunately been replaced with a more organized chaos. So, my qualms with this album have little to do with the songs themselves and more to do with how they were played, recorded, mixed, and produced. Perhaps this means Bill should get back together with Chris Colbourn, Tom Maginnis, and their effects pedals and take another crack at these fifteen songs. The songs are good enough for a second chance. And I sure miss Buffalo Tom.
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