Labels: sonic boom
Review by: Andy Malcolm
When someone brings up the whole San Diego thing, the bands that’ll tend to get mentioned are Drive Like Jehu or Swing Kids or Three Mile Pilot or something else on Gravity. Here at the Collective, we love all those shenanigans, but there is an excellent branch of San Diego hardcore / indie rock that falls secretly below the radar. Boilermaker are still a hideously under-rated band, and Terrin Durfey from the ‘maker lends his glorious vocal talents to this record. And Boilermaker are indelibly connected with two fantastic yet now long since defunct San Diego labels – Goldenrod, and Wrenched. Ignore those labels and you will never be exposed to such brilliant bands as the Jehu-mo 100 Watt Halo, chat-mo-meisters Calabash Case or the all over the shop-mo Interstate Ten. And thats not even allowing for the glorious stoner-mo dudes that were Chune, who were on Headhunter. All produced top notch San Dieg-mo lps, with a sound that often leaned on the mighty Jehu but always brought something new to the party. BUY THEM ALL! Or miss out on some really great music that has gone sadly un-loved and is unlikely ever to have a ‘revival’.
What has all this got to do with the Jade Shader? Very little, I just wanted to ramble a little about some bands that I think more people should check out. And from this point on in the review, I shall restrict my rambling to this cd and eulogising Boilermaker.
Its very difficult to review this cd in seperation from that band – Terrin’s vocals are so distinctive, and so impressive that he naturally comes to be the focus of anything he appears on. And that is obvious from the very outset here, with the gently persuasive “Minnesota” ambling along, with softer instrumentation and a little keyboards action building up to momentary louder passages. It picks up from the 2 new Boilermaker songs on Leucadia left off very nicely, before Jade Shader rushes headlong into the rockage of the blistering “Cha Cha Choo Choo”, which is probably my favourite song on the cd. This one owes the most to its San Diego-mo heritage, with a pounding rhythm and speeding guitars carrying everything along at quite a pace. “Eraser” then suddenly drops everything back down to a drift that would have nestled quite nicely on 11 songs, with a moody tone that is carried through some more rousing periods by louder vocals and warm bass. “Spacegoat” (?!) is probably the most catchy song on here, a mid-paced, rocking effort with killer dual guitar, before everything settles down again for another “11 Songs”-esque reprise in “Buzz Genie”. So good!
Well, if you’ve grown tired waiting for the vaporous new Three Pile Pilot record, and you miss Boilermaker as much as I, then this is essential. I’d recommend it to way more people than that though, for its simply one of the best things I have heard in quite some time.