Search - Mendoza Line :: If They Knew This Was the End

The Early Years

armenianthunder | los angeles | 12/20/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Thanks to the good people at Bar/None Records, you, the blossoming Mendoza Line fan, no longer have to scour the internet for copies of the band's first CD, "Poems to a Pawnshop" and the early EP "Like Someone in Love." This dandy re-issue makes available the best songs from those releases, as well as some other quality unreleased tunes, and the result is a fine album on its own terms, that combines the band's early love for loud, bracing rockers, with its more burgeoning sensitive, poppy side. Now, Tim Bracy's ever-pithy liner notes would have us believe that they had no idea what they were doing at the time, but the songs here tell a different story; surely the songwriters behind the bouncy "Dollars to Donuts," the sardonic "Small Town Napoleons," the empathetic "If You Knew Her As I Know Her," the self-effacing "I Behaved That Way," and the rollicking "Molly, Please Stop Touching Me" are not your run-of-the-mill indie rock amateurs. An essential piece of the rich Mendoza Line mosaic."