Compulsion

Comforter (Elektra)
by Scott Hefflon
photo by Chris Johnson

The integrity and personal strength are rather the most notable qualities of this band. Their music is adrenaline-soaked pop punk. Noisy, catchy, throaty, energetic and rather indistinguishable from scores of other fine bands that realized that wearing Superman T-shirts, jumping and goofing around while playing up tempo fun tunes is, well, it’s O.K. to do in public.

Yup, we’re in the mid-’90s now and all the anger gets a little tiresome sometimes. Scowls give you headaches after a while and, gosh darn it, is it so politically incorrect to want to smile and jump around to some fun indie-style ’70s-ish punk? (Ignore the fact the Almighty WB brings you this tasty dish because they serve most of our sonic nourishment in one way or another anyway…) There’s a bit of Pixies in here, a flavoring of chain-smoking grunge noise, and a healthy glass of bop ’til you drop mania to wash it all down.

To return to the aforementioned stand behind your beliefs theme (which is theoretically the basis of punk anyway, right? It ain’t just about simple chord patterns, spiky/dyed hair and cool whip attitude, right?), there was evidently some ruckus about their wet-kitty-with-brick-tied-to-neck poster. In the memo WB PR faxed out, the band explained the symbolic representation of both cat and brick as well as the thought-provoking implications of their relationship as depicted in the poster.

Huh, and I thought they just didn’t like cats.