Riverboat Gamblers – Underneath the Owl (Music Review)
By Andrew Gable • Oct 6th, 2009 • Category: Punk/New Wave/Hardcore, ReviewsRiverboat Gamblers
Underneath the Owl
Volcom
Rating: 4 out of 5
Hell yes! Finally some good pop punk – it’s been a while. My duties at ZapTown have been to review albums thus far (which is awesome – no complaints at all), and the albums are forcing me to stretch outside of my musical comfort zone. This has been both scary and enlightening, though I am right at home with Underneath the Owl, the latest LP from the Texas-based pop punks, the Riverboat Gamblers. Great punk rock and rock-punk music.
The good formula’s all here: bouncy pop punk beats, perfectly timed drums and fills, and an album cover that lends itself well to making one-inch buttons (badges for my British friends). They also bring fun, ascending palm-mute build ups and good back ups and melodies. It reminds me a bit of the punk band Millencolin, or even a fully distorted guitar version of modern Against Me!. The 11-song LP even has a somewhat gratuitous ending on the track “Catastrophe.”
Other tracks of note are “Alexandria” and “Robots May Break Your Heart.” “The Tearjerker” revives a ’50s/’60s feel into a punk ballad. “Sleepless” features a different singer (from the other tracks) in a driving song that gradually builds from sparse and solid to frantic and intense.
Though they hail from Texas, their flavor of punk rock isn’t country tinged; it sounds like it could very well come out of SoCal or Gainesville, Florida.
This absolutely stays on my iPod.
Links:
Riverboat Gamblers on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/theriverboatgamblers
And on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/riverboatgamblers
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Andrew Gable is a 30-something journalism student in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has played in a few local bands and is an avid collector of music. Outside of sharing his opinion with many people who don’t ask for it, he can be found drawing, skateboarding, and drinking copious amounts of coffee at local coffee establishments.
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