Audacity - Mellow Cruisers

AUDACITY didn't meet in college and didn't even meet in high school or middle school-this particular band goes back to second grade in Fullerton, California, where baby guitarists KYLE GIBSON and MATTSCHMALFELD met and bonded thanks to moms who were both big into the Beatles. After Punk 101 with a savvy older sister who clued them in on Bikini Kill, the Stooges and the Buzzcocks and after searching up Wire and the Adverts in the wild mess of early Internet file-sharing, Gibson and Schmalfeld were ready for junior high and bassist CAMERON CROWE and drummer THOMAS ALVAREZ, who'd been playing on his brother's drum kit in the family garage. Following a CDR demo, an album on Burger, and three years of touring and scrapping, the band returns with a new full-length. On Mellow Cruisers, the Audacity machine reinforces that SoCal core with the tangled guitar of Dinosaur Jr, the bottle-smashing rock 'n' roll of the early Replacements, Nirvana's blown-apart Bleached rockers, even some kind of screwy post-Pinkerton twin-guitar riff derangement on "Subway Girl"'s middle break-this is a punk band that spits out pop songs at high velocity, that breaks open a chorus with an even better chorus and stacks lead on melody on lead until the whole thing just blurs into white light.