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Rating:
Simply beautiful. This is how one can summarize the debut of Common Rider, released in the same year of their formation (1999) by Jessie Michaels, former Operation Ivy member.
Accompanied by Mass Giorgini (bass) and Dan Lumley (drums), both former Screeching Weasel members, Jessie chose the band's name from a Japanese TV show (Kamn Raidâ) and the trio released "Last Wave Rockers," immediately notable for its childlike artwork on the cover.
It starts with a gem: "Classics Of Love" is beautiful, especially in the choruses with alternating vocals, "Castaways" is more rhythmic and allows for a brief interlude where a shy organ appears, while "Signal Signal" and "Walk Down The River" have a more reggae flavor and a danceable beat, the latter enhanced by the second female voice and a sax that accompanies us on the 'walk down the river'.
Then there's my favorite: "Conscious Burning," where the horns weave into the sharp, precise drumming, making the track one of the most singable, naturally after "Carry On," made to be learned after the first verse.
"Deep Spring" is a semi-acoustic interlude where one can admire Jessie's vocal skills, while the subsequent "Angels At Play," like "Hetaseeker" and "Rise Or Fall," are among the fastest tracks on the album, never forgetting to delight us with pastel-tinted melodies and singable choruses.
What strikes me, though, is the simplicity made perfection that permeates the entirety of "Last Wave Rockers": sharp drums, "square" bass line, 4 clean guitar chords that do not seek distortion to cover everything as you often hear in many three-member bands. Songs as normal as they are excellent.
It all sounds a bit ska, a bit reggae, with hints of punk, but in my opinion, this is mostly rock. A classic rock, with songs that can be sung along with after just one listen, genuine rock with clean sounds, straightforward choruses, lacking sterile virtuosity or filling electronic parts.
So welcome these albums, especially when played by people with such a respectable past.
To be sung!
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Castaways (02:14)
Can you hear the call of a blood-seated song
singing "battered old castaways why don't you come home?"
It's a long way back, but we're gonna go home
'cause there ain't nothing where we've been going
If the night chills to the bone
Gonna hold you through 'till dawn
It's a long way back, but we're gonna go home
Wanna take you back to our home town
gonna kiss you in the tides of the power and the sound
Chorus
04 Carry On (02:01)
Big city miles stretching out into the terminal horizon
Don't you know we had to get away?
It was two kids with a beat up Nova,
and a dream and a two a.m. song
It was two kids with a beat up Nova singing come carry on
Come carry on 'till the night's all gone
come carry on come right where we belong
The impossible girl lit a cigarette
and said "I don't give a damn if we never come home"
and I turned to her in the old starlight
and a tender amazement swallowed up the night
We could walk along be forever strong
drive into the night, and the right, and the wrong
It was two kids with a beat up Nova, and a dream, and a two A.M. song
Chorus
There ain't no dream like the one that's real
Ashby to Eighty
Eighty to the Bridge
Bridge down to One
Route One carry on
We ate the night up and we shot the big coast
'cause the shoreline makes a heart open like a rose
She found a song on the radio
and it wiped all the blood off my halo
It was two kids, whose heart were their own
Toughest the world has ever known
Chorus
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