SHARP PINS - RADIO DDR CS
My intention is to get a review in for each of my "Best of 2024" picks before the passage of time renders them all irrelevant (this space not safe for Greg the Builder, but how boring a world it would be to let a calendar dictate yer tastes! Eye digress: destroy time!). I arranged that list all alphabetical-like as to avoid some sorta hierarchy, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't my #1.
Word on the street is SHARP PINS carries a heavy GUIDED BY VOICES influence, a claim supported by their GBV cover at Bric a Brac around Halloween last year, though one I could not personally confirm or deny at that juncture. After a few quick lessons, I'd say those chuckleheads aren't fit to add "Lorelai" to their repertoire, let alone stake a claim to some small chunk of the 'PINS DNA. It's possible, maybe, that I missed some shreds of genius amongst the pretense and the hard Fs and one too many half-baked ideas, or maybe I should be thankful SHARP PINS found something of substance in the crumbling foundations of whatever Ohioan hovel they oozed and festered out of before shaping that influence into something far more profound (hey, GERMS had a YES riff open up one of their best songs!), but what I am certain of is that beyond those maybes exists the cool hiss of Radio DDR.
It's easy, as Martin Force has frequently opined (see also: complained), to market yourself as absolutely anything these days. "Alternative bands are Hardcore!" "The library is punk!" "Buying stamps is praxis!"Oh, D. Boon!, I hope we first dance and drink and embrace on the fiery shores of Hell, but if we have any gripes to parse, it's the junkyards full of eviscerated dictionaries! It's certainly fun to play with boundaries, but in the first place there's gotta be some lines to color outside of, ya dig?
And with that said, this is a PUNK record: big and loud and pretty and screaming, a rose in the concrete, smart and smirking like the clouds parting on a warm summer day. No, these ears didn't pick up the GBV influence and maybe that's some moronic oversight, but I hear the Paisley Underground and their forebears, and a side of THE KINKS, plus a dash of THE MONKEES. I saw cravats and beetle boots and MDC shirts, I felt the guitars wail and the rhythm reverberate, and one day I'll take every one of you pinheads and sit you down just a few inches from their drumset so you could get a demonstration real proper-like as to just how fuckin' hard you should be hittin' each and every time, god help us all. Again, a punk record, as clear and cogent an argument for the dissolution of genre tropes as MINUTEMEN's Buzz or Howl..., TENEMENT's Predatory Headlights, BIG BOYS' Lullabies Help the Brain Grow, NEW BLOODS' the Secret Life, NO BABIES' Someone To Watch Over Me, et al., yet as urgent and powerful as any of the first 7 DISCHARGE releases, made to get flipped, end on end, as soon as the AM transmission cuts out...
Coming soon, with some extra cuts, to vinyl via K Records and Perennial, I was lucky to get a copy of the Hallo Gallo Tapes edition, a tape and zine label run by primary songwriter Kai Slater. Listen here: https://sharppins.bandcamp.com/album/radio-ddr
Krawger