This South Dakota-based foursome crunches out catchy, raucous guitar-based
power-pop, a bit less sweet than classic Big Star, a bit less explosive
than early Replacements. Like their forebears in Cheap Trick and
Supertramp, these boys juxtapose ragged guitars with high, nearly falsetto
vocals, hard-pummeled drums with melodic choruses. The
buzzsaw riff on "Modern Text on Love" is Chilton-esque, running headlong into
baroquely musical verses. "Fade Out Classic" is faster, harder pop, with singalong
chorus and brief guitar eruptions. "The Latest in Company Brides" sports
the tangled razor-wire guitars of early Elvis Costello, and fuzz-warped
"Stains of Saints" wheels and swoops like early 1990s shoe-gaze.
The Sound of Pseudoscience is fast, fun rock 'n' roll and an
impressive debut for a band that's been together for less than two
years. The songs are economically written and tightly played, mostly
coming in under three minutes and without any extended solos. This
is an album that works best when you're not thinking about it too
hard. None of the lyrics stand up to close inspection — there's nothing
as funny as The Replacements' "Waitress in the Sky" or as ruefully perfect
as "Skyway." Moreover, there are no real melodic surprises or
eccentricities such as you'll hear on Big Star's recent In
Space. The songs remain exactly as good on the 10th time through as
they were on the first, neither fading into irritants nor developing
additional nuance.
I'd like to see the Weather Machines take a few more
chances, letting up on the controls and allowing the band to find what's
different about their music. Still, like Oranger's New Comes and
Goes, this album evokes the pure jubilance of power pop, and its
near-live energy suggests that Weather Machines would be well worth seeing
in concert.
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