 RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS
Underneath the Owl
Volcom Entertainment
(Release Date: 3/10/09)
Say you’re at the record store, looking at the new release shelf. There’s a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard of. There’s some dance trash you’d never listen to. There are some bands you used to like in high school that have fallen into lame obscurity, back for a last crack at you. There’s, well, Kelly Clarkson’s new album. And somewhere among the homogeny of pop/rock/electronica what-have-yous, you start thinking, “What happened to punk?” Did you lose track around the early ‘00s crap-splosion that was the word-number bands (lookin’ at you 182 and 41) and Green Day so-called revival? Have you given up yet?
Then there it is: Thank God for the Riverboat Gamblers, bringing back plain-ol’ three-chord, foot-stomping, fist-pumping, crowd-surfing furor for the simple love of the energy music. On their fourth full-length album, Underneath the Owl, the Gamblers deliver more of the same from their previous outings, and if not more, louder, and faster then just as much, just as loud, and just as fast as what we’ve come to expect from the Austin five-piece.
The record crackles with energy from track to track, but the standout (besides their already-released, free to pre-download single, “A Choppy, Yet Sincere Apology”) is “Robots May Break Your Heart,” a downplayed (if there is such a thing for the Gamblers) pop-rock song featuring a throwback vibraphone line. Although the continuous standout of the album is Eric Green’s drums, which start the album with a blow and continue to hit and crack like a tommy gun.
So if you’ve been missing records with fast songs, records with energy, records without a crappy ballad lurking around track seven, or records that clock in at just over 30 minutes in total, find a perch and get Underneath the Owl.
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