CD Review: Middle Class Rut - "No Name No Color"

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.