Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2/5 Released: 2007 Reviewer: Suzanne Goldman |
When you peel back the plastic of Pack Your Pistols, it’s like going back in time roughly 40 or 50 years. The Dirty Novels are pushing a sound that is so clearly a throwback to old-school rock that designing the CD to resemble a vinyl album was wholly unnecessary (albeit a cute touch). That kind of attention to detail, of course, will be totally lost on a generation that almost exclusively downloads their music.
Pack Your Pistols is crammed full of good, simple rock beats mixed with poppy backing vocals and repetitive, catchy riffs. However, with every song you’re anticipating a climactic moment that never arrives. You will listen to this entire album and not remember one track in particular when it’s over – each song blends into the next, leaving you tired and disinterested. By the time you hit ‘On Lover’s Lane,’ you feel as though you’ve heard everything these Albuquerque rockers could possibly have to offer.
Lead vocalist Pablo Novelas delivers something reminiscent of the snarly, punk-rocker-from-the-past crossed with Mick Jagger. While this retro-feel is somehow refreshing, the sound is too familiar and it lacks innovation. The lyrics are only partly discernible, and you get the distinct impression the actual words are irrelevant anyway. The idea here seems to be about projecting an image – somehow the music prompts me to imagine that this band is full of slick rockabilly hairdos (which it isn’t) – but simply wanting to be ultra-cool is not enough to compensate for an absence of depth and variety. Pack Your Pistols is just not risky enough.
The only standout item here is ‘Who Will Sing You Lullabies.’ At 4:40, this is the longest track on the disc – but it’s also the only one that gives any solo instrumental time. Incidentally, that 30 seconds or so, roughly 4 minutes in, is without a doubt the best thing on this disc, and the only indication that there’s potential for this band to outgrow the musical roots its trapped in.
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