Much as I admire the guy, there are times when I could give Jack White a good kicking. When the White Stripes broke through with their minimally unlikely guitar and drums sound around the turn of the Noughties, it seemed really refreshing: a back to basics approach with an eye on the primeval roots of Rock’n’Roll but with most of the bullshit viciously cut away.
As with all trailblazers, of course, it’s not fair to blame Jack for the diminishing returns of the guitar and drums duos who have since flooded the market. Besides, the likes of Kid Dakota and (more recently) Little Fish have shown the guitar and drums duo concept still has legs. Even if the latter have cheated a bit by bringing in a Hammond organ player of late.
I’d dearly love to bracket MIDDLE CLASS RUT with these latter combos. The Sacramento duo Zack Lopez (vocals/ guitars) and Sean Stockham (drums/ vocals) have come this far the hard way, slogging through critically-acclaimed EPs for three years and avoiding the missiles and winning friends at the bigger venue tours of duty with the likes of Them Crooked Vultures and Alice in Chains. They have favourably stung my ears before now and sound absolutely nothing like Jack and Meg. The White Stripes? Don’t make me retch! These guys are a sonic holocaust on four legs; an ‘ardcore hurricane more in keeping with Fugazi or the SST bands of the mid to late 80s.
At their best, the power they can conjure is devastating. Calls to Punk arms like ‘Lifelong Dayshift’ or the inside-looking-out paean to powerlessness of ‘USA’ (“the enemy lives outside your door/ at least that’s what you’re made to feel/ with fear you’ve got no control”) are bracing going on brilliant, while the slow-burning, Fugazi-style dynamics of ‘One Debt Away’ are wholly persuasive. The brooding, post-hardcore subterranean homesick blues of ‘Are You on your Way?’ is arguably even better, peddling textural, psych-tinged guitars and a lonesome lyric (“don’t you miss your family and your friends/don’t you feel this road never ends?”) even the hardest heart would struggle to deny.
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Unfortunately, while I can admire the militancy and urgency of their approach ‘til the cows come home, it’s harder to fall in love with over the space of 50 gruelling minutes and there are times when they simply seem to run out of steam. Recent single ‘New Low’ and seething, but grey ‘Sad to Know’ are both leaden and one-dimensional, while ‘Dead End’ sports a prophetic title and a lot of bluster, but precious little of substance. Indeed, by the time Lopez sings of “just goin’ through the motions” on ‘Thought I Was’, it’s difficult not to take him at face value. They win some crucial late brownie points with the welcome, acoustic-based stomp ‘Cornbred’ which serves to close the album on a positive note and supply us with some much-needed breathing space, but it all seems to have come a bit too late.
Ultimately, I feel frustrated by ‘No Name No Color’. I desperately want it to be transcendently great as well as showing how nature-defyingly colossal a racket two disaffected young geezers can kick up, yet all too often it ticks only the second box of those two. I firmly believe MCR have at least one brain-blisteringly stunning album in them, but it’s eluded them here. ‘No Name No Color’ is too relentless and often too grey to lift them out of the self-imposed sonic rut they’ve got themselves in. If they’re after longevity, they’ve gotta get out of it, out of it.
Middle Class Rut online
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