White Pages on Can't Stand Ya Records

White Pages, a trio out of Boston sent me their latest bare bones, stripped down, rock of punk single the other day and I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the lesser seen animals in the seven inch kingdom... the controversial single sided seven inch... a blank side you say? Blaphemy! You would be right except when I actually take a step back and look at what a 7" actually is: historically capable of just a single measley single song per side...well we're already dealing with a pretty ridiculous format, and I really can't blame them for taking that a step further and going single sided. At least they managed to jam four songs on the A-Side. Plus I don't mind sitting in the easy chair and not having to flip sides, appealing to my lazy side will get you everywhere, thanks guys.

"Please Kill Them" - When you get something like this in your hands... a caffeinated Nodzzz hyper punk sound... just something so unpretentious and great... played as simple as possible, you can almost feel it being over before it even started. They don't need anything, like Brilliant Colors, they have the perfect amount of work ethic when it comes to getting everything in perfect sync, favoring pure inspiration over that perfection is tops in my book. This is the indie punk, three people, belting out, weirdo rhythms, off kilter, brief punches of perfect songs. A mini melody yelled out, Christine adds that goofball '50s garage harmopny ah ah ah, panning across the speakers. Gritty and fast, is there even time to start throwing arms around in front of the stage? Unless you've heard this a million times, your in awe probably. "Forever Unclean" is all frantic desperation, it's like they're out there because they don't know what else to do. They're sort of using that Useless Eaters spring reverb, but it's buried among the ramshackle layers. "Dino and the Belmonts" has Christine on her backup la la's as fast as possible, they sort of barely keep up with each other generally, distortion on the vocal, like Personal and the Pizzas without the jokes, a because you always feel like those guys are going to fall apart at any second. "Empty Calories & Male Curiosity" Great back and forth between Joe's super punk yell and Christine's kind of measured talking response, it' reminding me of The Famines for some reason. The fact they pressed this on one side doesn't bother me anymopre, this is exactly what they wanted to do, and why they just have to keep doing that, and it'll be alright with me.
Yellow xerox half fold sleeve, thanking 'some fuckers', makes you believe in music again. That gang of four could still be good, that you can put something together in an afternoon and surprise yourself and never be able to duplicate it...get it from the band.