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Scott sent me the No Blues demo and I was a #1 fan immediately. Sometimes I'm reminded of Tenement, and sometimes Marked Men, but definitely with an overarching Tony Molina sense of arrangement and pacing in everything. A perfect power-pop style with a nice raw production, quick songs, unforgettable vocal melodies, tasteful guitar leads. Of course I immediately offered to do a record for them, and this is the first of several planned releases. Get in on the ground floor.
Our take: Debut single from this new band out of Hamliton, ON, a city which also gave us Teenage Head, one of the greatest punk/power-pop bands of all time. No Blues can definitely be described as power-pop, but they don’t really sound anything like Teenage Head… I guess that I was just showing off my knowledge of punk rock trivia there. Anyway, No Blues DO sound a lot like Tenement’s early singles and first LP, and they also remind me of more recent bands like Booji Boys and Liquids as well. Like those three bands, No Blues sound like a band who perhaps came out of the hardcore scene, but are now allowing themselves to do things like sing melodically and write songs in major keys, but maybe they’re also a little embarrassed to be expanding their horizons, so they drench their very bare-bones, 4-track-y production in a bunch of reverb and distortion. This isn’t a bad thing at all, and if you’re into what Booji Boys and Liquids are doing you’ll like the way that No Blues go about things. While I definitely hear those bands’ production styles in these three tracks, the melodic sensibility is much more like Tenement, in that instead of pop-punk type influences I hear a slight undercurrent of 90s alternative rock, particularly in the vocal melodies and the big, hooky guitar riffs. At any rate, this 7” is pretty much the perfect balance of pop and punk, and if you like any of the aforementioned bands you should probably go ahead and check it out.
Our take: Debut single from this new band out of Hamliton, ON, a city which also gave us Teenage Head, one of the greatest punk/power-pop bands of all time. No Blues can definitely be described as power-pop, but they don’t really sound anything like Teenage Head… I guess that I was just showing off my knowledge of punk rock trivia there. Anyway, No Blues DO sound a lot like Tenement’s early singles and first LP, and they also remind me of more recent bands like Booji Boys and Liquids as well. Like those three bands, No Blues sound like a band who perhaps came out of the hardcore scene, but are now allowing themselves to do things like sing melodically and write songs in major keys, but maybe they’re also a little embarrassed to be expanding their horizons, so they drench their very bare-bones, 4-track-y production in a bunch of reverb and distortion. This isn’t a bad thing at all, and if you’re into what Booji Boys and Liquids are doing you’ll like the way that No Blues go about things. While I definitely hear those bands’ production styles in these three tracks, the melodic sensibility is much more like Tenement, in that instead of pop-punk type influences I hear a slight undercurrent of 90s alternative rock, particularly in the vocal melodies and the big, hooky guitar riffs. At any rate, this 7” is pretty much the perfect balance of pop and punk, and if you like any of the aforementioned bands you should probably go ahead and check it out.