4 out of 5

Label: Southern

Prodcuer: Atombombpocketknife

Atombombpocketknife are pretty much everything I could want from a guitar rock group – solid hooks, good beats, stop and start quiet-to-loud moments, twisted lyrics that don’t avoid a “fuck” here and there but don’t lean on it…  At the same time, these albums don’t work if you’re not listening, and it’s easy to not listen because it all stays within a fairly monotone range both vocally and musically.  I would compare them to Silkworm in the sense of their skill and reliability, but where SKWM wore a sneer, ABPK wear shoes, at which they are gazing.

It took me a while to crack Silkworm, and that actually didn’t come through headphones, it came across on speakers when the riffs and vocals finally clicked, then suddenly all of their albums made sense, and were enriched with touches I just never noticed before.

Atombomb is more closeted with their spice. Though for all intents and purposes it’s a louder band, their tuneful singularity – the monotoneness that I mentioned – requires being plugged in, head to the speaker, listening for when the whisper turns to a grumble, when a strum becomes a chord.  Once attuned, Alpha Sounds then ripples with fire and bristle, each track a separate spin on a teeth-kicking yarn of rock and roll. And its sequencing (the secret sauce in the best albums), though containing a stereotypical quiet final song, is pretty perfect on this album, though again, only once you’ve opened it up: only then does track one reveal itself as the rocker, the last track as the rumblings of the storm going away, the tracks in between as scattered nuggets of progressions on their theme…

See, even my words get mish-mashed.  It takes some patient listening, but herein a great album lurks.