The third album by Portland’s Crack City Rockers shakes and shivers with 70s NYC punk energy and self-conscious lyrics with a bent toward the poetic. The most obvious reference point is Television. Eric S. Gregory sings a perfect version of Tom Verlaine, down to Verlaine’s idiosyncratic vocal tics, and lead guitarist Kenneth Coleman provides the Richard Lloyd foil, replicating that guitarist’s snaky guitar lines to a tee. Any one of a handful of tracks could easily prompt the listener to double check the album’s liner notes to make sure this is not actually some sort of secret reunion. Gregory’s lyrics range from the hyper-literate (“I could live in the wild, feral eyes, needle toothed smile. Instead I live in the mild, lopsided eyes, paralytic style.”) to the dryly humorous (injecting the line, “I’m here with no money, and no idea what to do,” into a song about confused lovers). However, it is really the band’s sonic style that provides the biggest excitement, using the Verlaine/Lloyd template as a jumping off point and never veering too far afield. It would be a mistake to call Crack City Rockers a one-trick pony (for example, “Cab It Home” is a quick-tempo slice of power pop with a red-hot rockabilly-tinged guitar solo), but one gets the feeling the band could definitely kick out a rockin’ cover of “Marquee Moon.”
~ Frank Valish
