Review: Ruth’s Hat

Ruth’s Hat
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Rock and Roll”
(Fast Music)

Ruth’s Hat is a tough name for a band because when you’re typing the website it could easily be read as: ‘Ruth Shat’, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is substantially different from ‘Ruth’s Hat’.  Nonetheless, the Hat has decided to keep both their moniker and infectious pop hooks intact on their latest release, “Hitchhiker’s Guide”.  Sounding a lot like a more rock heavy Beach Boys (think The Queers, minus the punk sentiments), Ruth’s Hat pull off their thirteen tracks with aplomb, keeping the harmonies in high gear and the emphasis on bars such as, “Don’t hold my hand, if all you do is fake it/ Don’t go messing with my heart, you’re gonna break it”.  Yeah, it would make me want to barf too, if I hadn’t written the exact same thing in a letter to Micaela Pepple in the ninth grade.  God, she was hot.

Ruth’s Hat aren’t really into lyrical variety either, as the first few lines of almost every song are about either “up all night drinkin'”, or “another long night” or “sitting all alone” or “I woke up early” or “she ran away one night”, which is pretty much saying the same thing over and over again with slightly different words.  With all the “Pet Sounds” influences you’d think these guys would have more happy stories to tell, instead of the same old laments.