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ShareAre 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?
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