PILLOWFIGHTS, THE:
Round 1: CD
I declare this album to be pop punk perfection. It’s ten tracks and most of the songs are about a minute (the longest is a minute and twenty-three seconds and the shortest is a robust thirty-three seconds). This band definitely subscribes to the Minutemen’s “jam econo” philosophy. This isn’t blast beat-driven powerviolence either, but fully fleshed out and great pop punk that just doesn’t see the need for stuff like bridges or repeating a chorus if it can get the job done the first time. With the male/female vocals, this is like a distilled concentration of the best moments of bands like Lemuria and Tsunami Bomb. The song “True Story” has one of my favorite lyrics as of late: “And on the first night, we hung out in the park/ it was like reading Huxley for the first time.” Something about the sentiment of that line really sticks with me. Not a second in the roughly ten minute runtime of this album is wasted, as every song has a memorable lyric, or riff, or little melodic moment. –Adrian (Silver Sprocket, avi@springmanrecords.com)