Peechees

Do The Math (Kill Rock Stars)
by Nik Rainey

At first, The Peechees had me enthralled. Hit “play” and suddenly it’s 1980 – the post-Bollocks, pre-Damaged cultural moment when West Coast suburban rugrats started to ape the strafe of the NYC/UK grit-‘n’-grunt axis for fun and little profit. The hard-fast-but-not-too-fast Peechee pogo rings with the dragstrip simplicity of an emission-sputterin’ rock jalopy pinging down the strand. Lead singer Christopher has his bratty Darby Crash mewl down cold. I was hooked. Then, six or seven songs later, I was reminded why this sound hadta mutate into hardcore in the first place – it’s not propulsive or bruising enough to hold your attention and not varied enough to avoid being grating (especially the warmed-over Darbyisms). Still, the lyrics have a certain semi-literate tug (dunno what a “Fascist Lawn” is, but don’t ask me to do any weeding), and their embrace of rank amateurism has its charm. Randomly program any four or five songs from Do The Math and you’ll have yerself an EP astringent enough to clear your pores at fifty paces. Listen to the whole thing in one sitting and you’ll just get a rash.