one-listen wednesday

so i didn't get any cds today. so i'm going back to one i haven't gotten to crack open yet.

stingray green
hard numbers
self-released

these guys are from minneapolis and consist of kent militzer on lead guitar, vocals and keyboards; dan sarka on guitar and vocals; robb burnham on drums; and dan boardman on bass, vocals, keyboards and guitar. that's a lot of guitars and keyboards. recording by boardman and militzer and mixed by militzer. so they're do-it-yourselfers.

second track "go home" starts with some seriously queen-inspired guitar. brian may look out. the recording sounds good, especially for what appears to be a home job. drums sound a little boxey, but that's my only complaint so far. they also get mad props for starting their press release with this sentence: "the word 'mantastic' gets thrown around a lot. but 'supergroup' doesn't." you see what they did? they made me laugh right away which is just incredibly hard to do within the format of the press release. kudos.

looking further down the press release, i see they've all done time in lots of different mpls bands, including magnatone, sparrows, and the magnolias. so on to the music: the queen thing is definitely there, but they're not super-glammy or anything. looks like we got another case of the power pops, here. i'm on track 3 ("good intentions") now, and it's got a sweet guitar solo. very '70s, and kind of reminding me of the movie "dazed and confused." but where a lot of retro-stuff is made to sound like a relic, this sounds more like the way the stuff was meant to sound straight off the assembly line. you know what i mean? there's no dust in these grooves.

i'm begining to gather that lead vocals are taken by whoever wrote the song? i think. dude, this kent millitzer's a burner. great tone, reminding me of scott wells from hockey night, who in turn reminded me, again, of the '70s. i wonder if i can make my guitar sound like the killer dual leads on "bad batch?"

harmony guitars. killer. people don't use that enough, in my humble o. i'm already more than halfway through; it's a very easy listen. not easy listening, though. i'm going to go ahead and recommend this to fans of straight-ahead good rock in the vein of other local superstars like rank strangers. i've got a feeling that tom hallett would appreciate these guys.

these fine fellows are having a release party for this here release on sat., apr. 22 at the hexagon, which is always free, so you should probably go. i think they'll fit right in. and thus i've reached the end of closer "when she comes," and, as such, the end of another one-listen wednesday. i'm gonna give this one the thumbs up for casual summer listening with the windows down while you're running around town picking up premos and brats for a backyard bbq.