Three-minute songs, three-line choruses and loud - really loud - playing: what would you expect from someone who at age 18 produced Primus' debut and a guy who used to drum with Paul Westerberg?
From the opening riff, Slider's Sudden Fun strikes you as a loud album, definitely not meant for the "let's kick back and mellow out" crowd. As long as you like it loud, you'll still be interested seven or eight listens later, thanks to vocalist/guitarist Matt Winegar's gift for getting into a song, making his point and getting out.
Eleven songs in 33 minutes equals very little wasted motion. The opening cut, "I Wanna Go," is one of several examples. It starts comical
- "Got up and went to church, outta my fucking head, made it home by 10, so I went back to bed" - been there, done that. Then it quickly - everything happens quickly on this album - turns into a 1990s night-life anthem. What makes the chorus shine is its simplicity: "'Cause when the lights are turned down low, everything starts moving slow, I wanna go." All the choruses are like that: short on words and long on possibilities.Winegar's voice, which much of the time has the same ragged, intense longing of Kurt Cobain's (check out "Inside"), also has a slushy lower register, giving songs like "Corduroy" and "Take Me Down" a coolly detached air.
The strongest song on an album with several high points may be "All Along." With an incredible guitar hook and a punchy two-line chorus, the song seems like it would fit right into the so-called "alternative" radio format. And radio or not, it'll definitely have you bopping around.
Of course radio may never play it for the same reason radio never picked up much on the Replacements. I don't know what that reason is and neither does anyone else who loves music, but at least that hasn't stopped record companies from getting behind music like this.
Winegar proves capable with a guitar and a bass (he plays both on the record; Zak Schaffer is playing bass on the road), but after hearing the solo on "Better" I wanted him to cut the rock 'n' roll cliche crap and stick with those great punchy pop songs - sans solo. Wisely, he steers clear of the "lead guitarist pose" the rest of the time.
Josh Freeze, who has drummed for Westerberg, Juliana Hatfield, and Devo, among others provides plenty of excitement from behind the kit. His work on the intro to "Corduroy" practically explodes off the CD.
Winegar and David Bianco, a former Rick Rubin engineer who has worked with Teenage Fanclub and Frank Black, produce. The pair give the disc the same clean sound of the two most-recent Goo-Goo Dolls albums, another band that borrowed a little from the Replacements to find a niche in lots of record collections.
Loud guitars on top of good pop songs may not be a new concept. Ultimately, it's Winegar's haiku-like ability to evoke strong images using few words that make this debut interesting.
