Riverdales - Tarantula - LP (2010)

Labels: recess
Review by: Oli Saunders

It took me a while to get into the previous Riverdales record ‘Invasion USA’ but it took much less time for me to decide that this new album is flat out amazing. For a band that’s been going for 16 years now, albeit in fits and starts, their sound is still refreshing. The main songwriters, Ben Foster and Danny Schafer, have helped to write the rulebook on what makes a good pop punk song, and continue to extend it here. This is punk firmly in Ramones territory but there are two sides to it: fairly ridiculously themed songs with very basic riffs and bizarre tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and then slower songs, often with love type themes that are right out of the 50s and 60s but with a punk edge. The combination is perfect and things are taken to further extremes than the Ramones ever did. I hope the band have a lot of fun when they are coming up with this stuff.

There’s no bad song on this record which I found was a feature of the band’s earlier output (though I am aware some people prefer the early stuff). ‘Girls Town’ is so simple and yet so perfect, ‘Master Ninja’ is definitely one of my favourites, along with ‘The Beginning Of The End’ and ‘Diabolik’. In all honesty I don’t understand why the Riverdales are not one of the first bands brought up when discussing good pop punk in both DIY and non DIY circles – this is probably my favourite album of the year.

18th December 2010