The Meices

Dirty Bird (London)
by Nik Rainey

They may have bobbed up from the same Bay from whence came the likes of Operation Ivy and Green Day, but The Meices have no truck with your calcified Gilman Street hassle. In this era of oneuppunkmanship, when “cred” has been reduced to tiresome tirades and narrow-minded belligerence (honestly, MaximumRockNRoll is about as ideologically crypto-fascist as American Spectator these days), it’s a welcome tonic to hear a “punk” band willingly submit to the radio-friendly beast without languishing in smug denial. I mean, Dirty Bird doesn’t even sound that much like punk, at least not in the ’90s sense. Earlier Meices releases, like ’94s Tastes Like Chicken, leaned more toward the Replacements than Black Flag anyway, but now they come off like a more practiced version of the punque progenitors of ’60s garage lore. Still, there’s more of the real ‘tude in the “hunh!” that kicks off Dirty Bird than in a year’s worth of Flipside releases. The Meices are unafraid to be melodic, even sensitive, but still retain the flip exuberance that makes the rough stuff fun. Producer Gil Norton gives the album the same kind of shasta-sheen that he gave the Pixies’ Bossanova, but you can still see the strange creatures swimming around happily underneath the glossy veneer. Nik’s picks to click are “Wow,” replete with a massed chorus and horns by Rocket From The Crypt’s Apollo 9 and JC 2000, and “Leave Me Alone” and “Yeah,” which manage a soft-loud dynamic without copping from Nirvana. Feather your nest with this, Luddites.