River City High – Richmond Motel – Review

River City High

Richmond Motel (Big Wheel Recreation)
by Tim Den

A few years ago, members of Reggie And The Full Effect (also in The Get Up Kids and Coalesce) and River City High (made up of people from Fun Size and Lazycain) wouldn’t have been caught dead with a vocal line instead of a jangly guitar sound. Now, they’re both trying to rewrite REO Speedwagon tunes. But hey, I ain’t got a beef with REO. I never did. But the indie rock contingency that these two bands’ former incarnations represent definitely did, and now they’ve taken their words back and crawled into the lap of big hooks and choruses. What gives, eh? I guess there’s only one constant in this situation: in time, the fashionable will abandon pop for another, “hipper” genre. Oh well…

Reggie And The Full Effect is a joke side project that uses everything from gangster samples, “witty/dorky” culture (which really means “we act and talk like dorks but we’re really the popular kids in school”) and inlay, to an Eddie and the Cruisers-esque storyline as its backbone. Sounds like the kind of stuff that tries to be so dorky (again, equals “cool”) that it nauseates? Well, at least some of the tunes ain’t bad. “From Me 2 U” and “Congratulations Matt and Christie” especially, since they maintain that “we wrote this in two seconds and it’s upbeat” vibe. I can dig it. River City High, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on a schtick (unless you count dressing like Social Distortion) but only comes up with half-original tunes. Major-scale riffing (surprise surprise), Beverly Hills 90210 theme song solos, and vocal lines that at best sound like a poor man’s Get Up Kids just doesn’t scream “necessary” to me. But it’s easy to sit back and relax to, or drive down the shore to, so the choice is yours. Pop rock for the new generation… who should really look to the older generation for the goods (The Beatles, Elvis Costello, Bad Religion, Lagwagon — take your pick).
(www.vagrant.com, www.bigwheelrec.com)