BJ FLEMING
Staff Writer
An unsubtle, adolescence is the sort of fun expected from New York City-based Morningwood’s first album.
Morningwood.
Ha! Get it?
Described by bassist Pedro Yanowitz as “a monster truck having sex with a blond girl,” I just don’t see how a person can’t like this band.
These, trashy, growling dance and grind tracks sound like New York. Think the same throw-back punk vein as The Strokes. They’d send a legal drinker out, pour booze down her throat and split her head open the next day when they blared on the alarm.
The band’s name is not just a marquis. The self-titled album has echoes of sexuality on most tracks.
“Babysitter,” “Easy,” “New York Girls,” “Body 21” and “Take Off Your Clothes” are five rigidly sexual songs on this 11-track debut.
Lead vocalist Chantel Claret is a woman of 23 whose overt lyrics are matched in her curvaceous sensuality and music video appeal. She is the icing on this shapely cake.
And, in this the MTV epoch, such a persona is just as important to commercial success as the music. It is clear Morningwood knows and sells this philosophy.
Bittersweetly, though, there’s more to them than sex. This band’s pedigree is formidable.
Ex-Spacehog guitarist Richard Steel is aggressive and gritty on the six-string, and ex-Wallflowers drummer Yanowitz carries some tunes with melodic, hoppy treatment on base guitar. Producing the album is the noted Gil Norton, whose credits include albums with Foo Fighters, The Pixies and Counting Crows.
The point is, this party-anthem schlock is thought out and well made and might not be schlock at all.
“Nu Rock,” is a track to note in which Claret screams her petite vocal chords bloody in a way that gives you a baby shot of adrenaline and the album its first momentum.
“The Nth Degree” had plenty of circulation on television and radio since the release, and for good reason. For “Nth Degree fans,” play the Morningwood wet T-shirt game on their Web site. You will laugh, and it isn’t dirty, surprisingly.
The album runs 41 minutes and 18 seconds, including the ultimate four-minute track “Ride the Lights,” which is an unusually slow, pensive end to an album of this length in this genre.
But, being the age of the iPod, perhaps album-building is a lost and forgotten art. Put “Ride the Lights” at the end of your own, longer, more thoughtful mix.
It’s true. Simple rhythms and melodies accompany rhymes like let’s go, disco, radio, rock ‘n’ roll, followed by hollaback cheerleader chants. However, lyrical gems and more progressive musical style pepper The Wood, most notably on the final track.
It is these glimmers that were enough to keep my interest the second and third listens.
After that, though, this Morningwood is little more than background music to a high school kegger.
A little more.
And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.
03-30-2006
