The Push Kings

Far Places (Sealed Fate)
by Katy Shea

The heart yearns for a certain levity at times – times when the dull hum of humanity threatens to push us all into a joyless dungeon of our own creation. The Push Kings are a small girl in a white party dress skipping through the park sucking on her thumb. You see her, she is bubbling along, sometimes skipping to synthetic hand clapping and soulful pop crooning, other times to Shaun Cassidy bubblegum melodies and some damn energetic tambourine slapping. And somehow she is that levity. You don’t want to like her. Her smile is almost leering and her skirt is a little short for all her apparent purity – but you can’t keep your eyes off her. So it is with Cambridge’s own Push Kings.

This album is, at the very least, something different amidst a lot of the same. The melodies are infectious, the lyrics range from cutesy to eccentric, the arrangements are fun and full of movement – yah, yah, yah – but ultimately it is the band’s approach that separates them from the fray. There are derivative aspects, especially vocally (Glenn Tilbrook, Paul McCartney, et al), and the percussion/rhythmic aspects could be a little less precise, but for all the imperfections, it still makes me sway just a little. The vocal lines are well-crafted and cover a wide range of styles (Brit pop, soul, rock) with ease. The arrangements are sophisticated and often complex without being self-consciously so.

The little girl has ground her white patent leather stiletto heel into my skull, and I am bobbing my head in rhythm, grinning into the spasm, still trying to look away. Yet all resistance is to no avail. It is beautiful pop wizardry, a breath of fresh ether after a lifetime of second hand Newport Lights. Buy it, see them, let them take you to Far Places.
(PO Box 9183 #120 Cambridge, MA 02139)