Middle Class Rut
No Name No Color
Bright Antenna
MCRut’s debut is one of
the few recent releases
whose raucous abandon
has a serious chance of
jolting you out of your
chair. But it’s not just
about Sean Stockham’s bombastic drums
and Zack Lopez’s tattered vocal chords
and bristling tones. Lopez (who favors Les
Paul Juniors, Oranges, and Marshalls) and
Stockham (who also sings via a headset
mic) do pack these 12 tracks with attitude
and bombast, but it would all be for naught
without the dynamic arrangements and the
soaring vocal melodies and harmonies—which sound like a cross between Jane’s
Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, and
the Beastie Boys. “Are You on Your Way”
serves up ethereal, delay-soaked leads,
taut, subtly dissonant rhythms, and a wistful,
ghostly outro, while “Cornbred” has
swampy, lo-fi acoustic work, and “New Low”
is driven by a tense ticking-time-bomb palm
mute, corpulent chords in the chorus, and a
quirkily beautiful Whammy solo. Throughout
each track, the deft guitar layering somehow
sounds airy while busting your chops like a
brass knuckle.