The Nixons
(MCA)
by Barbara Restaino
I can’t help but imagine wheat-colored pop rocks. The operative word here is imagine, okay? The songs on The Nixons‘ new album don’t come in synthetics like Tang tangerine-orange or fuck-me-red or pinkish-kinda-purple passion or artificially concocted blue-raspberry. Wheat-colored. That’s what I think those candy-sugar rocks are naturally, like Sugar in the Raw, you know, the stuff in the little brown package next to the stuff that may cause cancer in laboratory animals. Now that’s an oxymoron, putting “natural” and “pop rocks” anywhere near each other. Anyway, the songs – they’re very primary and mid-west windblown. And sometimes you close your eyes and swish them around in saliva to make sure you feel every last pop. Ya just like ’em. After the success of Foma and the radio play of its tributary “Sister,” I guess the band toured a shitload, playing everywhere they could. Then they hit the studio with a new bassist and recorded twelve songs. And the appeal is the fact that their songs are simply songs, not experiments or musings or conglomerations or fortified with vitamins and minerals or whatever. The Nixons simply continue blending deep guitar grooves with drums that pop in your mouth and echo in your throat and ears. Whether they crackle and burst out heavy like Soundgarden, slow it down with sweet ballads or bash with melody, there’s a constant rhythm throughout, a drag then hit.
The vanity-downer “Miss USA” has a bassline drag punctuated by a drum and vocal hit on Miss – “Only time keeps you up at night/And you’re just getting older, nature’s holding, gravity’s giving way/Miss USA.” It’s the songs with hooks like this one that rock in and out. The surprisingly up-tempo, melodic “Sad Sad Me” is an example, as well as “Leave” and “Screaming Yellow,” a song about a playground war that has a heavy sound and an almost psychedelic background. They’ve got a couple of massive ballads too, like “December” and “The Fall.” And all this is capped off by seven minutes and thirteen seconds of guitar-gliding, trumpet-whining and slow-sliding on “Shine.” Yeah, the pop rocks are down to a quiet sizzle. Time to shove another sticky handful onto my tongue.
