Saturday, July 28, 2012

Teenage Bottlerocket: Freak Out!

Bottlerocket's Back!

There've been rumbles that Teenage Bottlerocket's new album, Freak Out!, is uneven but that's just part of their M.O. As long as the ratio of hits to hmmm's remains this high we can all be fuckin' thankful that these Wyomingites are like no band on earth. Okay, it's a pop-punk album by a pop-punk band but hook-filled tracks "Maverick", "Done With Love", "Never Gonna Tell You" and "Summertime" up the pop to dangerously cool levels. Also, there's a metallic undercurrent here exemplified, poorly, in "Cruising for Chicks" and excellently in  "Headbanger" (explained here).

So sure Freak Out! has some filler tracks (though few agree which ones) but even Screeching Weasel's My Brain Hurts has a couple weaker tracks. And sure TB re-recorded re-used the originals from last year's Mutilate Me E.P.  but the Mr. T Experience did the same thing for Milk, Milk Lemonade and who (other than me!) remembers that now?

Bottom-line: Bottlerocket's back, baby!


  1. Bottlerocket's back indeed!

    I'm putting this one up there with Warning Device.

    "Done With Love" is so ridiculously good, along with "Radical", "Summertime", and "Go With the Flow".

    But I'm pretty sure "Punk House" and "Mutilate Me" were *not* re-recorded for the album.

    (Although some of the other song's riffs and pick slides *do* sound suspiciously recycled to my untrained ears. I'm not complaining tho'...)

  2. Oh yeah if there's one thing pop-punk is, it's Eco-friendly - recycle, re-use.
    Speaking of which the credits clearly indicate that there was no re-recording. My bad.

  3. I'm totally digging the new album, all the way through. I'm also with biopunk that this is up there with Warning Device, which some people seem to think is one of their lesser albums.

    1. I'm wondering if that's an effect of the order you heard the albums in. WD was my first TB record and I think one of their best.


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