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Pinhead
Gunpowder: Compulsive Disclosure
From this point on, it will be illegal to review any new-school punk album in any publication, be it online or on newsstands. This latest from Pinhead Gunpowder is the kind of album that any Hot Topic "punk" could use as proof for not having uni-directional taste in music. Compulsive Disclosure is full of fun surprises sprinkled throughout, such as the supremely ultimate antithesis of punk rock: the acoustic song!!! "Landlords" works well if you think of the protest folk music of the late 1960's, but on this album it seems out of place if not only because of the inclusion of the word "acoustic" in parenthesis beside the song title. A strikingly NOFX moment is the anthemic 21-second "Porch" that follows "Landlords," while "New Blood" sounds like Green Day ripping off the Ramones. Oh but wait just a moment; Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day plays guitar and sings in this band. It's all coming together now, and the reviewer is ready to throw this disc out the car window. Then you get the point of the album with the straight-ahead rock songs "Letter from AOF" and "Buffalo" that make you wonder how Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers would have sounded with cleaner production. The fact that Billie Joe Armstrong gives a nod to the greatest glam rocker of all time (Thunders, not Neil Diamond, though he is a close second) speaks volumes considering Green Day made their fame and fortune by cashing in on a teenage demand of new school punk that was initially laid out by the New York Dolls and the MC5. Billie Joe knows it's just about time and he does just that. "At Your Funeral" hints at early Elvis Costello circa "Lip Service" while "Black Mountain PT.3" has a ska-ish breakdown and ending a la Bosstones. This album is all over the place; this much is true. What is incontestably true is that you can tell these guys are at it just to have fun and not to satiate the die-hard pop-punk fanatics. Friends doing what they like to do best is good enough, and that's all that counts when you're making music in this style. Having someone listen to it in an effort to critique goes against the motive behind making the record in the first place. For a rock journalist, a song such as "2nd Street" sounds like Weezer covering some song from the "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Valley Girl" soundtrack. But to Pinhead Gunpowder, it's just another way to show that even punkers can have a sense of humility and still rock hard when remembering the forefathers...and mothers (don't forget Patti Smith and Penelope Houston) because after all, if mom won't buy you the new Pinhead Gunpowder, who will?
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