Labels: Red Scare
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Plenty of great melodic punk around these days, from Chinese Telephones to For Science and numerous others. Teenage Bottlerocket are hanging around on the edge of this group, giving us “Warning Device”, a 13 track album (their third) on Red Scare. The band have quite a pedigree, with Kody Templeman having played in the Lillingtons. Teenage Bottlerocket follow in a similar vein, this album would have fit just fine on Lookout. They play a straight forward variety of pop punk, leaning on the Lookout catalogue and the Ramones for their sound, and giving it highly enjoyable, punchy production. Quickfire tunes, good vocals, lots of catchiness. Very solid and fun, if utterly repetitive (there is a song that consists almost entirely of the line “She is not the one”) and derivative in a perfectly acceptable way. This style of music has no pretence of originality, and if you are the kind of person who can overlook that, then you probably already own this. There are a few moments that stand out, in particular “Pacemaker” which is a total headrush of melody and harmonies. Superb!
It’s nothing out of the ordinary and the chances that you’ll enjoy this (as is generally the case with pop punk) are almost entirely based on your ownership of similar sounding records. The majority of people will be happy enough to own the required Ramones LPs and leave it at that. The songs hit the right spot, the vocals are a standout, and the relentless nature of the album (two minutes, next song!) ensures that your attention doesn’t wander too much.