Music Review // BAD ANIMAL "Growing Pains"

https://soundcloud.com/listentobadanimal/sets/growing-pains //

At the end of 2018, I couldn't stop thinking about how 2019 was going to be The Year of Rock Music.   Maybe not in a mainstream way, but at least for me, as I saw the releases coming out throughout the year and still think back to the beginning of the year up until now and what has been released (Weep Wave, Buck Gooter, R. Stevie Moore for example)   BAD ANIMAL just adds to that overall feeling of this being The Year of Rock Music.

Right away, the first two songs- "Blackout" and "Oh No"- start this album off so strong.   This is distorted high energy with melody and rhythm behind it.    In some ways, the rock n roll quality of it all makes me think of someone like The Killers meets Coyote Shivers.   There are pieces of Cadillac Blindside in here as well, a little Tora Tora Torrence and even 22 Jacks. 

From those complex guitar notes in "Boombox" to that sped up punk part in "Cross My Heart", there is just this grit to this sound-- a roughness around the edges of the beauty.   In some ways, I feel like this has an appeal to it like Modest Mouse or a similar radio band but then when you hear it you can just as easily imagine a radio person saying "We can't play this, it's too loud". 

So if you take something in the more modern sense of what you might hear on the radio (I like to go back to The Killers) and add in another layer which might make those stuffed up suit types say "We can't play this", you know, just enough of that attitude to keep it off of the radio and then add in some punk and good old fashioned rock n roll (which has been heard pretty much forever) you'll have an idea of how hard BAD ANIMAL rocks.   Yes, you'll want this one blaring out of your speakers.