With regard to its academics, athletics and alcohol, Madison is accustomed to being labeled. Flattering or insulting, Madisonians applaud national attention in all its varieties. But as the town's eminence slips from an intellectual sanctuary to a blackout haven, its local musical reputation is left all but perished in the transit, forcing the doors to shut on reputable venues like Luther’s Blues, as revelers would rather frequent jukebox dive-bars than stages hosting indistinguishable local acts.
But all is about to change, and sooner than the newsstands run out of the college edition of Playboy, Madison will be known as the city of big rock.
Or, that is, the city of Big City Rock.
With its origins rooted somewhere along the isthmus, Big City Rock, an up-and-coming pop-rock quintet, single-handedly holds the power to launch Madison's musical scene to the acclaim of a national hotspot.
Original members and LaFollette High School alums Nate Bott (guitar, vocals), Frank Staniszewski (keyboardist) and Timothy Resudek (bass) traded cheese for gold a handful of years ago, moving to California in hopes of landing some sort of record deal. They coined the name Big City Rock in 2001, began touring with Phantom Planet and eventually teamed up with drummer Kaumyar and guitarist Andy Barr in 2004.
Three successful EPs generated West Coast popularity for the boys, eventually leading to a sweet little deal with Atlantic.
And now comes the group's self-titled debut, a modestly brilliant 10-track album that yields both big music and a surefire recipe for Top 40 success.
What makes the disc prevail is its cohered diversity, staying true to its ’80s inspirations without forgetting Billboard's status quo. It offers both igniting hooks and deeper ballads, presenting a familiar sound with an innovative twist. Fusing U2's arena rock with the disco-dazzle popularized by bands like the Killers, Big City Rock doesn't offer a novel sound, but, even better, a perfected sound, a crafted and chiseled style that pushes their maturity beyond the "debut album" expectations.
A ripping guitar riff opens the album on the track "Sink," a swelling number that superimposes vividly ironic lyrics like "I would kiss the feet of businessmen / If I knew you had hired them" on an overproduced beat, making it a chart-climber perfect for radio rotation.
With an electronic backbone and upbeat attitude that mimics the disco-inspired pop style of the Killers, the subsequent track, "All of the Above," similarly sends out the vibe of a major-label safe bet. Soon to be an arena staple, it opens with the rather cliché rhetorical questions of "Do you want to rock? / Do you want to roll? / Do you want to get down on the floor?"
It's definitely a track composed for the dance floor, as the frenzied synths and inert percussion force uncontrollable head-bobbing. To the trained musical ear, this track might just resonate a jazzy unoriginal, but it is still damn near impossible to ignore.
But despite their mainstream potential, the first two tracks are likely to generate some uneasiness among major-label skeptics. Sure, the sound is catchy, addictive and perfect for the FM portals, but where's the originality, the spontaneity, the danger?
The answer can be found buried in the remainder eight tracks. Outfitted with keyboard-driven masterpieces and electronic-edge brilliance, the majority of the disc proves that while Big City Rock can be generic in sound, it is always sincere in heart.
The vintage sounding "I Believe in You" unleashes a layered emotional delicacy, while the robotic "Human" fuses '80s synths with philosophical content, making the track as introspective as it is psychedelic.
With its cleaving guitar dominance, the power love ballad "A Better Place" is sure to find its spot on the soundtrack to the next big romantic comedy, while the album's closer "Touch the Horizon" takes it back a few decades, employing a reflective mood suited for a John Hughes flick.
Lyrically, however, the album's pace slightly falters, reminiscent more of an adolescent's diary than crafted musicianship (read: "I could fall off the face of the earth / and even my friends don't seem to care" or "I don't know why we got to try so hard / to be kind to one another"). But luckily the keyboard dominance, along with Bott's ear-candy vocals, supercede whatever words have clumsily been crooned.
Compressed to just 35 minutes, this debut album sounds more seasoned than the work of most storied professionals. Mature, masterful and three-fifths Madison, the boys of Big City Rock are about to show the world that they've struck some California gold.
Rating: 5 out of 5
