Being as it’s now a word that covers a multitude of sins, it’s sometimes hard to remember that punk had its origins in simple shout-along pub rock of the mid seventies. Finland’s I Walk The Line have not forgotten, however, and Black Wave Rising recalls the uncomplicated aesthetics of a genre that was always much closer to pop than most of its adherents would have liked to admit at the time.
I Walk The Line are a sort-of supergroup cobbled together from four other Finnish punk outfits, and apparently no strangers to chart success in their homeland. This doesn’t come as a great surprise; not only are rock and punk styles much more commercially viable than they ever were before, but Black Wave Rising is a collection of catchy choruses and simple melodies that are seemingly tailor-made for memorable radio or TV presence.
And if you’re after outsider chic and rebel credibility, you should probably be looking elsewhere. Granted, I Walk The Line aren’t working in their first language, but even so their lyrics are heavily dependent on the Oxford Dictionary of Obvious Punk Clichés – nihilism is a lot easier to take from musicians who sound less … well, less happy.
The music is pretty clichéd as well, but here at least I Walk The Line have an edge due to ripping off sounds that no one else has touched for a while. For a start, Black Wave Rising features quite a lot of cheesy psychedelic organ sounds a la The Damned. Coupled with some rockabilly rhythms, rock’n'roll song structures and those oh-so-poppy chorus hooks, the end result is endearingly mismatched – somewhere between a gruff and heavily-tattooed gang of Finns doing Martha and The Muffins cover versions, or the B-52s masquerading as punks as a novelty cameo role in some indie movie about hot rod culture.
And that’s the thing – Black Wave Rising may be unoriginal and unconvincing, but it does have a fairly decent fun quotient. Plus it’s good to hear the psychobilly riffs and burly simplicity that held currency when punk rock wasn’t just another commodity being traded by the major labels. And while the lyrics are pedestrian, at least they’re not whiny and self-obsessed; for example, “Words Like Knives” does a reasonably hands-off job of looking at the decay of the nuclear family from the point of view of a child.
So overall Black Wave Rising gets a thumbs-up. It’s not a great album by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a decent enough thirty-three minutes of energetic sing-along simplicity in a punk idiom all the more refreshing for having been underused in recent years. Don’t demand miracles from I Walk The Line, and they won’t let you down.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Black Wave Rising, garage, I Walk The Line, psychobilly, punk, rock'n'roll
