Needles//Pins. Needles//Pins

Following the review of Watts' 'Shady Rock & Rollers' on this blog yesterday, it is time for some more rock and roll today. With its fourth album Needles//Pins sets another sort of standard in rock. More uniquely U.S. oriented than the Boston outfit, the quality is not unlike though.

Needles//Pins is an album that really, really goes for the throat. Like the best songs of Gin Blossoms and Dan Baird they are tremendously melodic. From there a heavier sound is introduced making the song true rock and roll. The singing adds a little punkrock to the whole. The result is a hybrid of rock music that leads just to two results: wanting to sing along and to dance to the music. This is what The Wallflowers would have sounded like, had they started as a punkrock band two years later into the 90s.

In the very first song, 'Woe Is Us', the tempo goes up and only drops down temporarily in the interlude of the fifth song, 'Winnipeg 03', where a warm Hammond joins the band creating a different mood within the second, shining a little extra light on an already abundantly sunny day. It even gets the final chord.

There's one thing that the listener should not be in wait of, beauty. That there can be beauty in ugliness is something Needles//Pins proves to me. The road-worn voice of the singer Adam Ess, is the aged version of Social Distortion's Mike Ness. With the band kicking like a mule, the tempo is up the whole time to avoid the kicks and songs can be over before I settled in to them. Nothing ever gets more than needed on this album and when it's longer you get a great song like 'Winnipeg 03'. Needles//Pins is over before you know it, but not a second is lost to make an impression.

In the final song the tie with the modern U.K./Irish rock bands is made any way. 'The Tyranny Of Comfort' would not have looked out of place on either of the two Shame albums. The song underscores the urgency Needles//Pins shares with the world. The ten songs get nothing more than they need to make an immediate impression. In the bio accompanying the album Will Fitzpatrick shares: "a future classic? Hell, why not?". It is impossible to predict, but it's been a while since I heard a U.S. (punk)rocking album with this urgency, melody and quality all in one. So, hell, why not?, I conclude

Wout de Natris

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