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JUSTAMUSTACHE
(Frenchkiss)
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Here’s further proof that timing and the size of a band’s label can mean more than it should, and that every big-hype band is followed closely by three zero-hype bands a billion times more interesting. On their second album in two years, Detroit’s neo-wave Thunderbirds Are Now! deserve every last drop of yellow Bloc Party ink and then some. The Birds know they’re Les Savy Fav-orites up-down-left-and-right, but even more than melody they value the unexpected: each song has three or four bits that flat-out blindside. The idea that you shouldn’t expect much from rock lyrics may explain the cult of the lazy rock songwriter. But "Here’s a message to the crowd/It won’t rain, not a single cloud/But tomorrow it’s gonna pour" ("From: Skulls") ain’t bad for a chorus. And the attitude-heavy "You’ve got a big mouth with big words spilling out it/Come here, give me a kiss/With vocabulary lips" ("Better Safe Than Safair") is better than the entire second half of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm.
