Search - Crack City Rockers :: New Myths

If New York punk wasn't good for anything else (which, actually, it was, but let's pretend), it at least inspired people like Eric Gregory of Portland's Crack City Rockers to build songs steeped in playful lyricism and intense electric energy. Along with an affinity for Television, Richard Hell and the Velvet Underground, the group's debut album, Joyce Hotel, proved that this band has a knack for mining the depth and width of the punk genre. Its latest EP, New Myths, goes further. While Gregory has never sounded more like the frantic Mr. Hell than on "Perfect Life," or the guitars sounded more like Television than on "Already Dead," this album shows the Crack City Rockers stepping outside of their NY influences. "Occult Piss" recalls a less emotive Elvis Costello fronting a more aggressive Attractions, while the brilliant "Glory of the Sun," with its fat, bleating sax line and sunny vocals, falls somewhere between Dinosaur Jr. and Madness. And when Gregory sings! "So full of joy I feel like I'm retarded," you believe it. New Myths is the awesome second release from Portland, Oregon?s Crack City Rockers. Working again with Co-producer and engineer Larry Crane (Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, The Go-Betweens, Quasi) at Portland's Jackpot Studios, New Myths picks up where their debut, Joyce Hotel left off with quick, melodic, attitude-charged songs in the classic style of post-Heartbreakers Bowery punk. What separates Crack City Rockers from the wave of post-White Stripes/Strokes bands of the world are lead singer Eric Gregory?s streetwise vignettes which have drawn comparisons to both Lou Reed and James Joyce. Throwing their lot in with other like-minded adherents of the "short,sharp, shocked" such as the Kuchar brothers, Angry Samoans, Kenneth Anger, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and the Buzzcocks, "New Myths" is approximately 14 minutes in length.