You have to wonder about this major label attachment the Von Bondies are wearing these days. What exactly is hooking up to the hulking machinery of the Warner empire going to achieve, for either party? Their debut album, ‘Lack Of Communication’, was a ragged and lively example of Detroit’s rock n roll pulse still beating a strong jittery beat in the modern world. It provided a pretty worthy underground subtext to some of the bigger mainstream noises being made by their contemporaries. But as this album’s preceding single ‘C’mon C’mon’ proved, while they’ve certainly still got their bite and their teeth may be razor sharp, the bark’s not nearly as threatening as it originally seemed, after being dulled down by circumstance. Circumstance is everything in garage rock. It’s not just an easily defined style that can be programmed into a Yamaha keyboard.
Although the reality isn’t as literal as this comparison suggests, you can’t help but feel that in the scheme of things they’re the Stone Temple Pilots to the White Stripes’ Nirvana. A reactionary signing that’ll do them more harm than good and have executives asking “Jason Von Who?” in 18 months. But then the pasting Mr Stollsteimer received from ex-buddy White has probably done him (ergo them) more good than harm, so we’ll have to sit back and wait for conformation on that. And for their lurch in the direction of coherence there are some really bursting tunes on here, especially the opening three-way of the glammy ‘No Regrets’, the self-referential MC5-esque testimonial ‘Broken Man’ and the holler-aloud vibrancy of ‘C’mon C’mon’. They’re seemingly going to swing on this formulaic strain till it frays.
Only it doesn’t fray, does it. As impassioned and classic as Stollsteimer’s lupine howl sounds, as clockwork as the drums consistently are and as exactly as the guitars fuzz within their dictated confines, there are few rough edges. And any spark in a controlled environment can never amount to all that much. By the time you get to ‘The Fever’ things are simply set to ‘cruise’ and his unambitious lyrics are beginning to grate. But then some of the songs on here, such as the creeping title track, would have been lost beneath the squall on ‘Lack of Communication’ and are undoubtedly bigger and bolder than anything they’ve written before. And Carrie Smith and Marcie Bolen’s almost deadpan vocals on ‘Not That Social’ and ‘Crawl Through The Darkness’, do break things up and round off the experience. It’s just there seems to be too much taken for granted here to elevate it to greatness.