Regardless of what you make of his band, Blink 182, (personally I can't stomach them, I like one and a half songs from their entire career) Travis Barker is a bloody awesome drummer, but his production career, largely due to the genres he's associated with not being "my thing" has largely passed me by. It's him who steps in on knob-twiddling duties for Boston garage-punks Twin Berlin's new EP. Their manifesto is to rebel against the wave of electro-pop and synthesised music. Maybe that's not such a bad move, our brains have been overloaded with such sounds recently. So perhaps a new band injecting fresh life into the world of guitar music is just what we need. Hell, just look what happened when the Strokes did a similar thing a few years back! Twin Berlin however, are looking to a different set of past heroes for inspiration.
'There Goes My Virtue' is more conventional fare than the uber-cool New York quartet and it concentrates on a very American version of punk, and a very modern one at that. So hopes of any kind of resurrection are quickly dashed. What Twin Berlin do very well is inject so much energy into these songs that they'd never pass an Olympic doping test. 'Can't Take, Take, Take' smashes out the kind of drumming a thousand Duracell bunnies would struggle to match. Barker himself must be proud. The grungy riff on 'Don't Hang Around' is fairly orthodox again, but attacked with vigour and no small amount of shredding, and the same goes for 'Give Up On Me'. So they're not saviours and the more experimental/indie fans are better off passing on this one, but if you want a simple rock 'n' roll riot you're looking in the right place.
Twin Berlin's website
Stream or buy the EP
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