Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Album Review: Junkie- W/E

Junkie
W/E
*** out of *****

The San Antonio based Junkie delivers an engaging mix of surf rock, lo-fi garage and oddball pop with their newest release w/e. The trio manages to craft their own quirky sense of engagement over these twelve tracks that deal with social isolation, awkward love and getting really high.

The disk is in a sense a throwback as songs are rooted in simple 50's rock style with direct teen lyrics (not from the 50's by any stretch), basic harmonies and hooks, however the band fuzz it up and inject their own style, breathing fresh life into the songs. "glued ghouls" sounds like it was taken out of a malt shop and dipped into ganja based batter complete with mini bass break that moves.

The opener "i like the things you say" couldn't be anymore straight forward and direct while "hurl" uses woo's to the best of their ability. "always in love always bummed" goes angular excellently and is one of our favorite overall efforts here.

"olives owner" has a punchy directness while "bowls" samples Spicoli a few times also picking up the energy in a circular lyrical fashion that deals with, what else, "Smoking THC, Tripping on LSD". The only misstep is when the band tries to stretch their formula over six plus minutes on "i'm not complaining (i think i like it)", the idea and their style in general just works better in small doses.

Closing with the notion "A lot of things bother me/but I don't care, it's whatever" they've captured a perfect slacker motto for the current generation. While the band can become repetitive in many ways, that is directly where their charm lies. It is the basic things that make rock and roll continually great and Junkie seem to have those pretty well covered on w/e.
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Another completely random Bandcamp find, support the band, buy the album and stream it below:

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