Customer Reviews

Purely Evil

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4 star:		(3)
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There are at least twenty geographical locations with flourishing music scenes; New York City just happens to be the current leader. With an ever-growing list of bands, one would almost want to move to the Big Apple just for the music scene. Mostly consisting of post-punk, no wave, and garage rock revival, it's hard to find someone who doesn't advocate one of these bands as being the next best thing since soft toilet seats.With time, I believe The Rogers Sisters will find themselves nestled somewhere in the middle of quite a few of these acts. This Brooklyn trio is playing some fierce party music with overflowing spoonfuls of B-52's, ESG, and Boy's Don't Cry-era Cure. Hell, they even do a nice rendition of The Cure's song, "Object."

One of the positive things about Purely Evil is that it reminds me of a time when albums were made to get you off your ass and have a good time. The type of fun you so desperately wanted to have when your parents still had full control over your free time. Since many of today's highly celebrated artists need analysis before they can be enjoyed, The Rogers Sisters are refreshing in the sense that they come off as a band that merely wants you to hang out with them. Possibly on Friday night after school or at the bar they own in Brooklyn called Daddy's. Their label, Troubleman Unlimited, has become pretty good about evoking this style of retro sound and image over the past several years, thereby allowing many bands to flourish in this type of upbringing.

With only 28 minutes to pack in 11 songs, Purely Evil gets right to work with "Zero Point." Heavy guitar distortion and flowing bass riffs permeate the airspace until the vocals enter the room to take full control of the situation. However, once the guitar is given some room to flourish, it's revealed that there are layers of melody amidst all this aggression. With the exception of only a couple songs, this isn't just middling punk rock that you've heard several hundred times over the course of your life. Take a song like "Song for Freddie," for example. The lyrics insinuate that this is an ode to the late Freddie Mercury of Queen. The entire trio sings "He wants to ride his bicycle/He wants to ride it all day long/He wants to ride his bicycle/He wants to ride it through this song" numerous times, expressing the lighthearted tone of the album.

"Delayed Reaction," which also happens to be my favorite, is saturated with flanged guitar effects and chomping lyrical prowess. It's a song that should make just about anyone happy. It should also be noted that bassist, Miyuka Furtado, lays down some very intricate sounds in addition to doing a large portion of the singing. He could be the next Peter Hook on the track "I Can Tell You How I Feel about You." Some tracks, including "I Dig a Hole," don't seem to contribute too much to the overall outcome of Purely Evil. I wouldn't go so far as to call it filler, but it's definitely derivative of most punk rock songs. The good news, however, is that these songs are short enough that one or two less appealing tracks don't take away from the bulk of the album. Purely Evil is an enjoyable listen, and an album I've found myself coming back to quite a bit for certain tracks.

... I've seen these kids live and they're amazing! The girls can rock out with the best of them and their bassist is a crazed maniac on stage. Makes everybody want to get up and dance. Haven't heard anything else much like them, either. Cool, new-wave punk rock.

gotta love the rogers sisters. a great band to see live. the bass player is a maniac and the lead singer is cuter than a bug's ear. i have a crush on her. asside from that, their music keeps you moving and wanting to hear more. 'purely evil' is the best cramps cover i ever heard...!

for fans of liliput, slits & gang of 4. mixed with a little cramps & b52s for good measure. never heard anything like it.

I listened to this on my cd walkman while walking to work the other day, and it got me so UP, UP, UP! Catchy, dance-ish, the Rogers Sisters' sound reminds me of the U.K. eighties band the Au Pairs, with a soupcon of the B-52's thrown in. They trade off with male and female vocals, repeating phrases over a bopping guitar/bass/drums set-up. It keeps to the currently fashionable trend of very short albums -- 11 songs in just over 28 minutes, but they're worth every economical second! This is one to tell my friends about. Get it, and you will, too.

The Rogers Sisters must be fun in concert, because their latest album, Purely Evil, bounces from wall to wall with sassiness, left-wing lite politics and a sense of new wave style.

One of a beehive hairdo-full of NYC bands paying homage to '60s/'70s punk (the Strokes, Radio 4) or '80s new wave (the Natural History, Interpol), the Rogers Sisters channel the B-52s, Missing Persons, the Rezillos and Devo. Sometimes the band dips a little too deeply into the B-52s gene pool, cloning the siren screams of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson's guitar hooks ("Zero Point," "Song for Freddie."). For the most part, though, this album pops along with tight riffing, woo-woo sing-alongs and reckless abandon.

A lot of the Sisters' songs are silly ("Song for Freddie," "(I'm a) Ballerina"), sweet ("Now They Know (XOXO)") or kind of sick ("The Black Anniversary"). When they get political, the results are hardly as jarring or thought-provoking as Rage Against the Machine, but they get their points across, with plenty of pep. On "Zero Point," the band asks, "The Earth is gonna stop/is anybody listening?" In "Purely Evil," the trio seems upset with corporate and political thugs, but lines like "well there's a deep dark secret/inside the corporation" pale next to Michael Moore's diatribes against the ruling, right-wing elite. But who looks to rock and roll for confirmation of political views anyway?

The Rogers Sisters are one of many artists in the indie (Chicks on Speed) and mainstream (No Doubt) worlds that worship new wave's heyday, and as such their chance of making a real mark is lessened by the sheer number of starry-eyed kids all shooting for the same target. So perhaps they should embrace a cause? I think the Sisters could do nothing better for the scene than to work to liberate the classic punkumentary "Urgh! A Music War." There are scattered movements afoot online to convince Fox Home Video to release the 1981 movie on DVD. I'd sure as hell buy that, and I'd buy a cup of coffee for anyone who helped get it into my collection. Whaddaya say, Sisters?

Dave Brigham
Junkmedia.org Review