The Get Quick: See You in the Crossfire

If you want to know where Philly’s The Get Quick is coming from — and possibly where it’s going — you might want to skip halfway through the album to the Beatles cover “She Said, She Said”. Clearly, the Beatles are square one for hard-edged power pop of the type the Get Quick espouses. Yet here, they take this cover into a feedback-drenched, distortion-fuzzed, garage-glam territory that is dangerous, smirking, complicated an anything but mop topped. “Mister Pinkeye”, coming late, is perhaps the album’s most intellectually intense joy, arising out of a hiss and burble of feedback into a classic Brit-rock swagger, but also giving a literate nod to novelist Paul Auster. But opener “Renting a Room” with its tight, side-switching wah-wah and Smithereens-ish romantic chorus is almost as subversive. There’s a Nuggets-retro party going on here, sure, but also serious instrumental chops and clever wordplay. And just listen to how the bassline breathes melodic life into “Chemical Reaction”‘s slash and burn guitar riff. It’s a strut and a shimmy and a wink of the eye all at the once, and if you don’t feel it on some level, you’ve forgotten how to love rock and roll.