Jeff Rosenstock
Hey Allison! [7-inch] (2014)
Ricky Frankel
We've been living in a post—Bomb The Music Industry! world for about ten months now. So what has Jeff Rosenstock been up to? He and Chris Farren put out the first Antarctigo Vespucci release earlier this year and now SideOneDummy has signed him as a solo artist. And to give us just a little taste of what his upcoming full length will sound like, he has released the first single off the new album.
On the A—side is the song "Hey Allison!" For those of you die—hard Bomb The Music Industry! fans you'll be happy to hear that overall Rosenstock has (at least on this single) made his new material a little heavier and more reliant on distorted guitars than his older songs, but at this same time you can still hear some instances of the pop influence he is famous for incorporating into his music. For example, you can here just how much harder his sound has gotten during the bridge of the song, but then all of the sudden he goes into singing in a very high falsetto voice during the same part.
The second song, which is entitled "I'm So Gross," is a slow song that is also heavily reliant on grungy—sounding guitars. While one heavily distorted guitar (and maybe even a distorted bass) play the rhythm section, the lead guitar just screams each note as it follows Jeff's singing. But the listener doesn't get much of the bright and poppy sound in this song however. What the listener does get though, is quite the image in their head when he sings the lyrics "I chased my beer/With someone else's beer/But don't go slow and steadyâ¦"
If this single gives us any clue as to what the album as a whole will sound like, then its looking like 2015 is already off to a great start with new releases.