EP Reviews! Broadway Calls! Pepper! Wavves!

Sometimes full lengths are a drag. Not to mention, how many bands have put a song on a full length only to never play it beyond recording it? That shit is a waste. Here are some new EPs worth checking out.

Broadway Calls Toxic Kids



I interviewed Broadway Calls for SFist last year and in that interview, singer/guitarist Ty Vaughan mentioned that he had been listening to "lots of Green Day" as he was prepping songs for an upcoming release which at that time, appeared to be a full length. Apparently Broadway Calls didn't feel like waiting to put out a full length and decided to hit us with six of those "heavy on the Green Day" tracks via an ep entitled Toxic Kids. Vaughan wasn't lying when he alluded to Green Day being an influence on these newer songs, but what stands out the most about this EP is the raw, grimey production which is a far cry from the band's last full-length, Good Views, Bad News. Toxic Kids, with its gritty production, falls much more in line with the bands live sound and aesthetic than the super-slick Good Views, Bad News (but that's not saying we aren't fans of that record or anything). Stand out tracks include the opener, "I'm So Ready To Be Done With My Twenties" (a sentiment I found myself thinking when I left that decade of my life behind) as well as the peppy, upbeat title track, "Toxic Kids". The band just left on a month long tour which will take them out to The Fest in Florida, so check their website (broadwaycalls.tumblr.com) for tour dates and go get your pogo on.

Pepper Stitches



One of my best friends turned me onto Pepper about seven years ago. He and I are both Sublime fans (make all the fun you want, we give no fucks) and I want to say some girl he was hanging out floated him their first full length, which we found appealing as Sublime fans. Pepper were a solid reggae/ska band, nothing more, nothing less. I ended up getting wasted with the band in Atlanta when their tour played the downstairs room of the Masquerade (I was upstairs drum teching for Unearth). Their latest release, Stitches, is five songs of catchy ska/reggae that will be huge with college kids nationwide. The highlight of the ep would definitely be "Drunk Girl", which is an homage to that all too common party occurrence known as inebriated women. "Wake Up" lends itself well to some epic pogo-ing and sees vocalist Kaleo Wassmen doing his best Brad Nowell (and doing him justice, might I add). Stitches sort of trails off as it ends (the slowish "Lonely" and acoustic version of "Mirror" don't hold up as well against the ep's earlier tracks), but overall, fans of fun, reggae, summertime, partying, and bonfires are going to be REALLY into this ep.

Wavves Life Sux



At first, I wasn't really a fan of Wavves. That first lp was brutal on my ears and I was somewhat jealous that their singer/guitarist Nathan Williams was dating Bethanny from Best Coast. I saw Wavves open for Best Coast and even that particular live show left a little to be desired. On a whim, I decided to check out the King Of The Beach record and was totally blown away. I don't know what I hadn't been hearing before, but Wavves were fucking awesome. Life Sux dropped last month and has picked up where King Of The Beach left off and then some. Wavves mastermind Nathan Williams has perfected blending beachy surf rock with noisy pop punk so much that MTV can't stop using his songs in the background of Jersey shore almost weekly. "I Wanna Be Dave Grohl", the ep's first single, is one of those anthemic songs that lends itself well to epic car singalongs and serious public transportation air drumming. Life Sux features collaborations with Best Coast and Fucked Up, the former being laden with cute, female background vocals and the latter sounding basically like a Wavves song sans collaborators, but we all know Fucked Up blows so no one should be surprised. Life Sux will be all over several "best of 2011" lists, so cop this shit now because its that good.

Polar Bear Club "Clash Battle Guilt Pride" Review!

Polar Bear Club are a band I came across one night back in 2008 while I was sitting in my room at my old house on 8th St. in West Oakland snatching up a random records off iTunes for an impending two week vacation to New York City. I had been downloading anything that would fall under the general pop punk/melodic hardcore catagory, and the iTunes music store suggested I check them out. I remember thinking "what the fuck kind of name is Polar Bear Club?" I ultimately said "fuggit" and bought Sometimes Things Just Disappear on a whim. Needless to say, I was blown away. Growing up during the golden age of what some, but not all people call "emo" in the mid-90s, it had been a very long time since I had heard any band nail that sound since The Promise Ring broke up.

As (mis)fortune would have it, Polar Bear Club happened to be touring California when I was going to be in New York, so I totally missed seeing them on their first US tour, but ended up seeing them about eight months later with Living With Lions in San Francisco, where their live show actually moved me to stagedive for what could have been the first time in 2009. After that gig it was sealed: I was a diehard Polar Bear Club fan.



Their previous full length, Chasing Hamburg was good, but as the album progressed, it lost the overall intensity and ferocity of their earlier releases (not to say that there weren't some bangers on it though). I don't fault the band for that. Writing an album is incredibly difficult. I was definitely curious to hear Clash Battle Guilt Pride, but after not loving Chasing Hamburg, I was expecting the record to lack the intensity that drew me into the band in the first place. Like so many other times in my life, I couldn't have been more wrong. If Chasing Hamburg shined grit and ferocity for pop sensibility, Polar Bear Club managed to blend both elements flawlessly on Clash Battle Guilt Pride. The opening track, "Pawner", is one of those opening tracks that sets the tone for an entire album, triggering that excited, antsy feeling in your gut when you just know you're in for one hell of a good time. Polar Bear Club dance on that fine line between accessibility and intensity for the remainder of the album, delivering stand out songs like "Killin' It", "Life Between The Lines", and "I'll Never Leave New York". Pop punk and melodic hardcore continue to be watered down by so many subpar Warped Tour bands or by kids who got tired of playing mosh metal and want to try their hand at "making it big". Polar Bear Club evoke the overall feel of an era of hardcore and emo that remains a not too distant memory for some of us, but continues to fade further in the rearview mirror as each year goes by. Clash Battle Guilt Pride is outstanding, and highly recommended by us at Freelance Fiend. It drops later this month on Bridge 9 Records.