Customer Reviews

Making the Rounds

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's wild to see how a band evolves, especially one of my favorite bands: the Boss Martians. This record is a good example of what a great band does to stay fresh and ahead of the game. If you own some of their old records or singles, you might be in for a shock. By exploring new musical territory, in this case hard-hitting pop rock 'n' roll (think Cheap Trick meets Elvis Costello with some 70's proto-punk), the Boss Martians leave behind the increasingly stale garage/surf music scene and make a mark with MAKING THE ROUNDS. This CD rocks! I'm not surprised since I've never been let down by these guys, but I gotta say that this time, the Boss Martians have outdone themselves. Now instead of having Boss Martians records next to my Sonics and Trashmen LP's, I can put them alongside my Dead Boys, Stooges and early Elvis Costello albums. That's cool!

This isn't punk, it isn't MTV bloat rock, and the songs are contagious as all criminy. Hey... wait a minute... this must be ROCK AND ROLL!!! Very, very "garage" with noticeable hard rock influence, Boss Martians are currently one of my great rock hopes after seeing them tear it up twice in Austin, TX at this year's SXSW conference! Garage rockers 'She Was the One' and 'My Love Ain't Free' are standout killers on this offering, a vital rock and roll album all in all. Here's hoping they make it up to Vanc. soon!!!

On their 7th album (8 if you count Mystery Action's HERE'S TO ANOTHER YEAR) Seattle's Boss Martians toss aside the instros and focus entirely on loud, blaring, exciting late 60's-early 70's garage-style ROCK & ROLL!! Their previous album (which had been delayed for nearly 2 years) only hinted at the new sound on a couple of songs-- here it's POWER-POP all the way!!! 11 new songs (and 1 remake) fill out a disc so energized it's hard to believe it's the same band from 10 YEARS ago! I have to admit, at the moment I prefer the original version of "She Moves Me" to the new one, but I've had years to get used to the 45. (It's kinda like when Chicago did their 1986 remake of "25 Or 6 To 4", which I'm sure some thought was outright blasphemous!)

As usual, even with the sound cranked up to the max, Evan Foster manages to display just enough "polish" to raise his band above the pack (loud & raw has its merits, but loud & refined just adds to the appeal for me). They now sound more like Philly's Mondo Topless than ever-- WHO'D have believed it possible? Does this album mean that Evan's "other" band, Mystery Action, is now redundant? Time will tell.

WARNING: Once you get any number of this CD's infectious tracks stuck in your head you've had it (especially anthem "Feel It Like Everyone" and heartbreak rocker "Put Some Hurt On You")! "Making the Rounds" has everything I look for in a new band: exceptional songwriting, enormous hooks, tough-luck melodies, sweat-soaked guitar bravado, bash-it-up rock 'n' roll drums, and most importantly, FUN! Very raw production makes this effort lean but very, very mean. First heard this band on Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show & immmediately was hooked by the hard rock meets punk meets classic power pop penmanship. Although slightly inferior to their current effort "The Set-Up" (a modern day classic that you just need to hear to believe!), "Making the Rounds" is an excellent starting point. Very highly recommended for those of you that would have liked to hear Elvis Costello sing songs by original Seattle grit-rockers The Sonics with Rick Neilson guesting on lead guitar. Boss Martians are my new favorite band.

The more things change, the more things stay the same: These guys started out as a cookie-cutter surf revival band, now they're a standard-issue power-pop-punky-garage outfit. Whatever. The improvement is marginal, and the bottom line is the same: No songs. Some fanzines have compared this to Cheap Trick, the Sonics, and the Stooges -- an absurd comparison by any measure. Those bands were innovative and, in the case of the Stooges, reshaped the face of music. These songs would barely make good outtakes for Cheap Trick. Power pop is supposed to be memorable, and this isn't.