Policemen in Pickups – Get Me Through The Night

Ok so straight off I have to state that there is a lot to like about New York alterna-punks Policemen in Pickups, four guys who came back to playing music together after their previous band Hollywood Ave finished back in 2009 and a mission statement that says:

We want to make you remember a time before bands were pre-packaged, cookie-cutter, and weak. Before tickets cost 70 bucks. Let’s get back to the basement shows on a Friday night in the midst of a beer-fueled sing-along…We will not use technology to mask our imperfections. We are open and honest in our music. We want to entertain you…and ourselves. Reaching more ears is a goal – getting famous is not. We are not here to sell out or show off or be rock stars. We don’t know about any “scenes”.

An admirable goal I think you’ll agree, but once the play button is pressed and the opening bars of Alive begin, I start to have reservations. Immediately the spoken word style vocals stand out for all the wrong reasons, especially when balanced against impressive guitar riffing and some well placed melodies and ‘whoah-ohs’ in the background. All Medieval Desires strays into traditional pop punk territory, and the opening riff sounds like it could have been lifted from New Found Glory’s Dressed to Kill.

Their harmonies are impressive and, but there needs to be variety as every song comes across as a rant against bands these guys don’t like or a 90’s nostalgia trip.

I Was Coming Clean, another spoken word rant peppered with nostalgia about a bad relationship with the added bonus of lyrics that fall into the ‘so bad they’re almost good’ category: No one told me about the watery eyes, you better get me to a bathroom guys. The 70’s Santana-esque guitar riffing is probably the best part of this tune (that’s a sentence I never thought I’d see myself write). Morrissey is easily the best thing so far and the chorus features some insanely great background vocals (they should sing more) and is rammed full of melody. Working for the weekend, after getting over my disappointment that this wasn’t a cover of the Loverboy song of the same name, is actually pretty great. A whimsical piano intro, references to gin, plus more excellent guitar riffage and the vocals have a 90’s punk snarl about them that had been sadly lacking. It really surpasses everything else and is the best song on the record.

Policemen in Pickups could be really interesting and as I said at the beginning there is a lot of like about them. Upon multiple spins their direct lyrical approach becomes more interesting and will definitely resonate with children of the late 80’s and 90’s. I just think they need to diversify the vocal, the brash, spoken word approach makes them both novel and boring at the same time but with a bit more emphasis on sharing these duties with the rest of the band they could be on to a good thing.