I found The Riverboat Gamblers, a quintet from Denton, Texas, on the flip side of that cool green Generators record, and I have to say that I quite liked them. Not as much as The Generators, but I try not to rank music, insofar as that is possible. I couldn’t make out much of the lyrical content in “Ice Water” (besides the words “ice water” and a few “hey hey hey hey”s), and “Wasting Time” wasn’t exactly genius from a lyrical perspective, either, but it didn’t really matter, because these songs rocked. Killer metal guitars and super-catchy choruses sung with a punk sneer that made me want to thrash wildly around the living room in my black panties and sleazegrinder t-shirt. And I am a hot chick, so this is a good thing.

Meh. This little band from Sleazegrinder’s hometown (that would be Boston, baby) didn’t exactly rock my world. It’s not that the songs were bad, they just weren’t terribly exciting, in a radio-punk non-offensive kind of way. I think they were trying to make a political statement about the state of affairs in America today, but it just ended up sounding juvenile. (They are a far cry from The Clash, let me assure you. Or even Green Day.) So that’s my review, such that it is: not bad, but not great, either. Which, I believe, is the very definition of  “meh.”

The Skels sell themselves as “New Jersey’s best pub-rock band” and I think that, given enough rum and coke, some drunk friends, and a cozy little wood and brass pub, I might agree with that statement. But I listened to this record sober, in my living room, alone. Every once in a while I pull out my old high school copy of The Pogues’ “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” and dig on the Irish sleaze that is Shane MacGowan. Conversely, every time I hear that song about too much drinking while they were away on vacation by Spirit of the West (or is it Great Big Sea? does it really matter??), I want to stab  freshly-sharpened pencils into my ears. I’ve never really been an Irish pub kind of girl, to be honest. So, despite the fact that my toes insisted on tapping away to those fucking Irish pipes, I can’t really recommend this record. I swear I heard a banjo in there somewhere, and I’m just not in an Irish banjo place, musically, at this point in my life, I guess. But I bet they’d be fun live. If you were drunk, with friends, in a cozy little wood and brass pub. (As an aside, this record LOOKED incredible. Hot pink and yellow split down the middle, like a vinyl version of a banana/cherry popsicle, if such a thing existed. I wanted to run my tongue over it, feel it melting, cool and smooth, on my lips...)