If there were to be a Broadway musical made based on a pop punk band (we're ignoring whatever the hell Green Day is doing with that whole American Idiot thing), The Clippers would definitely be the band of focus. There's just this whole Broadway-type feel to the manner of vocals boasted by Massachusetts pop punkers The Clippers. It's honestly hard to look anywhere else and find such a wonderful singing voice in this genre. And it sits atop a throne of perfectly performed twinkly-emo instrumentals with a necessary focus on how amazing the drum work is.
The Clippers's recent Top Shelf Records release An Evening With... is like the Portal of 7"s released in 2011. When a reviewer is handed Portal, said reviewer quickly realizes that they cannot find a single negative thing to say about it. This has to be what it's like for every reviewer to sit down and listen to An Evening With The Clippers, not just me. This record is just great. If a person were to argue that it's "just okay", I'd probably get almost as offended as I would if they made the same claim about pizza. This album isn't "just okay", and neither is pizza. You fools. Both were cooked in the kitchen of Mount Olympus by the gods.
The intro to the track "Quiet Confidence" is pretty much all the evidence you need to realize how perfect this album. The drum solo intro, into the so-clean-it's-dirty lead guitar and vocals akin to Mike Huguenor or Shinobu. Plus the bass is barely fuzzy enough to be a Build-A-Bear, and for that purpose bears its own instrumentation style and contributes what it wants to each song. Also, did you notice I made a bear pun? Because I didn't notice it until after my fingers hit the right keys.
So, with one song you can already judge this album as perfect, and the other four are honestly just there to drive the point home once it has had too much to drink and a lack of cab fare. This album was presented to me after the band was already defined by another reviewer as "sexy pop punk". I can't really disagree here. This music is so sexy that I feel like I must have somehow cheated on my girlfriend just by listening to it. Thank Poseidon for my Catholic upbringing, because I definitely need to repent after this one.
You can check out the entire An Evening With... over at Soundcloud, and in case you missed it earlier in the review-here's a link to the awesome record label that put this killer out in the wild.
-Idle
You can also check out the compilation Fuck Off All Nerds, which is a benefit compilation which was released in memory of the late and great Mitch Dubey.
Idle and the Bear.
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