Randy
“Welfare Problems”
(Burning Heart / Epitaph)
If it weren’t so true, I wouldn’t even mention it, but Randy falls smack dab into the whole wave of zipped up retro-garage rock. The Hives, White Stripes, The Strokes, yeah, you’ve heard it. Do you like it? I don’t care. I like this. It’s peppered with Beatles-esque melody and that’s always a good place to start for pop melody. Any kid who actually liked the early works of the Kinks has to dig this at least a little. It’s just revved up, punked up late 60’s rock. They treat the electric guitar like it’s a pure thing and run them through reverb-drenched amps and keep things stripped down both in song structure and lyrical delivery (repeated choruses that happen to be the song titles are par for the course). It’s simple and it rocks. Deal.
