Novocaine Records. Album Info: This is the debut LP of this Chicago-based punkabilly band. For more info and mp3's, go to therolemodels.com.
I'm lucky enough to be in a relatively successful band from Chicago, a city with one of America's most eclectic music scenes, and a huge underground. This affords me the opportunity to hear all kinds of up-and-coming music, and The RoleModels are one of the best I've seen so far. I'm not into the rockabilly scene at all, so I don't have a lot of fancy-pantsed comparisons to make, but I would say there's a bit of Rancid and U.S. Bombs influence with a decent helping of Mike Ness. What I DO know is that this band ROCKS. This album is 12 tracks of non-stop rock and roll that stylistically borders a lot of the punk and rock genres (newschool, oldschool, psychobilly, etc.) but still has a definite cohesiveness that never leaves you doubting that this is 100% RoleModels. Musically one of the main standout points is the wonderful rockabilly lead stylings of "Pretty" Jason Late, creating the hooks in all the right places and making sure the songs get rooted firmly in your brain all day. It's rare that I get a CD in which almost every song is great, but on this 12-track wonder, only one of them is skippable -- the rest you can't help but rock out to (except of course Daydream, a really well crafted, traditional rock and roll ballad). For you punk-cover fanatics, there's a great rendition of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" that made me go download the original because I thought I'd been missing out on something historic. Well I can say I'm no Cash fan but I'm DEFINITELY a huge RoleModels fan. You'll notice this CD ranked on my top 10 albums of the year, so I think it goes without saying you should get a hold of this band.
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