Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Cream Pink Spiders' Closure: Hit Them With Your Best (Cheap) Shot
Posted by Tracy Moore on Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 11:12 AM
If you've been out on the scene lately, you might have heard The Pink Spiders were breaking up, and you might have heard that The Pink Spiders are now called Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots. You might have heard that the Spiders were out in Sausalito making a record with Jerry Harrison, only now the debut is that of Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots. You'd be basically right, since the Spiders are indeed taking a break, and the new incarnation features members recently playing with the Spiders, and that record they were working on with Harrison is, in fact, the Cheap Shots' debut. So call it a break, or call it a new incarnation, or call it both.
You may have also already seen the new lineup on Nashville Cream's '60s cover night, featuring former Feable Weiner/Mondo Primo guitarist and songwriter Josh Watson as well as former Silent Friction/Comfies mainstay Nathan Hansen. (We also remember him in the Darling Hearts.)
So how does the new stuff sound?
It's only a difference in degree and not kind from The Pink Spiders' old stuff. But it does revisit the earlier, more stripped-down sounds you could hear on the band's first full-length, Hot Pink--a record I still defend to this day as being full of catchy, bubblegum punk that wowed not just on its own merit but also given its naked ambition back in the even-less-cool-to-be-ambitious-in-the-rock-scene year 2004.
When people say they hate The Pink Spiders, they're saying first and foremost that they hate a band that's predictably easy to hate in this town. As Adam Gold and I just discussed in this here office before writing this, they are a band you can easily dismiss for their attitude alone, which was more or less, "We're going to make popular records and be famous." This is, of course, anathema to the toil-and-struggle pathos of so many bands in this town, who feel that--after having done such toiling and struggling--they deserve some kind of medal for showing up and playing a gig month after month, whether or not they ever get any better. I'm certainly not suggesting every band exhibit such naked careerism, but fuck, wanting to write a good pop song is not a crime, and I don't want to live in any world where people aren't still trying their hand at that endeavor.
I still like that record, but I also like it when bands look cool, so feel free to dismiss all my musical opinions on that basis alone. Go ahead. See if I care. But most people who tell me they hate The Pink Spiders haven't listened to that first record. I wasn't a big fan of the subsequent work, which was predictably slickened by major-label money and radio ambition. But that first record was on to something.
The three tracks on Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots' MySpace are evidence he's moving back toward that ragged pop--and I would argue he should have never left that place. Friction's vocals have always had a rough-hewn alleycat sensibility, and it works well when combined with ragged pop sensibilities, and not as well when fronting glossy pop. "The Cheap Shot" and "Treading Water" remind me of trashy '80s glam with a poppier bounce--it's like listening to Faster Pussycat-meets-Swedish disco glam band The Ark. ("Beercan Ashtrays" features sassy talkback vocals from Brett Anderson of The Donnas.)
I'm interested to see where it goes, and to see if there's room in this town full of egos for someone to keep trying to find their way, even if that way heads right back where they started. Matt Friction and the Cheap Shots play Mercy Lounge Sept. 14.
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