Rain City Rockers – Mayday

Rain City Rockers, a kind of punk rock super-group featuring Andrew Conroy on vocals and guitar alongside Goldfingers’ Darren Pfeiffer on drums, Die Mannequin’s Antony Bleed on bass and Thom Thacker of Sum 41 and Gob could be forgiven if their debut album Mayday sounded a little disjointed. Often these collaborations end up sounding like disparate pieces of various bands thrown together. That is definitely not the case here, and Rain City Rockers should be commended for putting together a cohesive record that both sounds a bit familiar yet fresh at the same time. The result is particularly impressive as Mayday was recorded live in the studio across a single day.

There is a wide range of genres being referenced, albeit with varying degrees of success, across Mayday; ska-punk on Tori, 80’s new wave guitar bands like The Knack on Choked Up, and early 00’s pop punk on Miss Lindsay or She Doesn’t Even Know. The band are really at their best when they come together on simple infectious rock and roll. Lead single Sainte Babe is a great example of this, a well crafted meandering pop punk anthem which is good fun, and features a whimsical side with lyrics like She went to Catholic school and now you’ve got a thing for nuns that the band sometimes struggle to get right.

Monster and Disgrace both also standout, despite the fact that they are peppered with juvenile lyrics (These tricks are not for kids? On a song about prostitution? Really?), but the songs are really solid, riff heavy and full of melodies that really do grab you at first listen.

That cheeky side that the band (for the most part) get right is also nicely balanced with a dark edge, probably best illustrated in On My Own, on the surface a fairly by-the-numbers pop punk ditty, but repeated listens reveal a much darker tone in the story of lost love and betrayal; And if you want to, I could destroy you tonight.

The problem I have with the record is that on one side it is full of well written songs, executed flawlessly as the band (as you’d expect) are insanely tight and the sound is great, but on the other hand, sporadically juvenile lyrics and a sound that sometimes creeps too close to pop punk contemporaries like Bowling For Soup or Fountains of Wayne drag the overall effect down a little. Overall Rain City Rockers get right more than they get wrong and have produced an impressive debut album that sounds cohesive, despite the varied background from its members, their short life together as a band and the quite insane recording time of a single day. If Mayday is what they can come up with those limitations, I am quite excited about what the future holds for them.