River City Tanlines: Im Your Negative

River City Tanlines
I'm Your Negative
Dirtnap
2006-09-19

Are you ready to rock? Following a clutch of 7″ singles, I’m Your Negative is the rowdy, raucous first full-length from Alicja Trout’s River City Tanlines. Trout has been in a whole bunch of bands — Lost Sounds, the Clears, Destruction Unit and Mouserocket to name a few. Here she seeks out the intersections between punk, metal, hardcore and classic rock, grafting arena-sized distorted riffs onto rapid-fire beats. Title track (and opener) “I’m Your Negative” sets a torrid pace right off the bat, with its neck-snapping, hard-punk guitar riff and shouted mad-girl choruses. Slow-chugging, palm-muted, blues-rockers — “In My Mode Rolling” and (the very political) “Shoot the Eye Out” — sit alongside surprisingly pop-melodic punk tunes (“Not Gonna Think About It”) here, and the band churns out a smokin’ hot country-blues cover of Wheels on Fire’s “Cryin’ Bleedin’ Dyin”. Trout’s the main attraction — tough and beautiful like Joan Jett or rockin’ Chryssie Hyne — but the band’s tight as hell, too, and must be monstrous live. My main problem with this album is that I can’t get it to go loud enough. You set the volume to a level where it makes sense and the walls start to shake. But that’s not entirely a bad thing, is it?

RATING 7 / 10