The Bomb – Speed Is Everything

If I were feeling confident, I’d say something brash like, “90s postpunk turned more potentially ferocious musicians into whiny, self-obsessed college-rockers than sweater vests ever did.” Sure, it doesn’t make much sense, but the point I’m trying to make is that the early 90s was in many ways a pretty dark time for punk. Not quite as bad as the late 80s apparently were, but the foundations for “alternative” music was clearly being laid. And that was a particular brand of music and concurrent cultural aesthetic that’d be slapping its ugly tentacles all over the world – to its detriment – for a long time.

So what does this have to do with The Bomb’s new LP, Speed Is Everything? Well, a lot. For one, The Bomb’s frontman, Jeff Pezzati, was in a little punk band called Naked Raygun; a band that actually did quite a bit to offset the tepid shoegazing dreck that was commonplace at the time. Still, I’ll be honest, I could never fully get into the band – this is more of a personal preference, of course – but I always preferred Pegboy’s Strong Reaction 7” over anything Naked Raygun ever did. So I feel like I’m reasonably unbiased when it comes to Pezzati’s oeuvre – there’s no stars in these eyeballs, you know, no worship of the man’s back catalog.

That said, Speed Is Everything turns out sounding like, ironically enough, a slightly harder-edged college rock album from that period. Maybe it’s the fact that J. Robbins produced the thing – nearly everything the man does, whether he’s working with Pezzatti or Vic Bondi or whoever, winds up sounding similar in tone to a Jawbox record. Maybe it’s the fact that, despite the title, Speed Is Everything never really seems to become even remotely frantic. The only song that carries any savagery with it is “Integrity,” and that’s only because it’s almost fast and Paint It Black’s Dan Yemin offers up some searing background vocals. So rest assured, there’s no bombs here and there’s no speed.

What the record does have is some solidly crafted and admittedly well-recorded postpunk songs that still manage to have some hooks to them. There’s some amazing vocal melodies that run consistently throughout the record and they do a lot to carry the songs forward.  There’s the bass-and-drum heavy “The Rescue,” sung from a superhero’s point of view as he tries to rescue a woman who’s bound to train trestles – when Pezzatti bashfully croons “Hope my tights, they fit just right / Hide my johnson way out of your view,” it manages to be endearing and not corny at all. So, yes, the album has it’s points. And yet for every song like that one, there’s something like “Space Age Love Song,” with it’s layered guitar noodling and Pezzatti’s effect-laden vocals, which sounds like something straight from a 120 Minutes segment from 1992.

All in all, it’s a pleasant enough listen – kind of the sonic equivalent to a lazy Sunday afternoon, rather than a Saturday night spent getting drunk and shooting bottle rockets out of your ass in the backyard. But one does have to wonder that, were it not for Pezzatti’s pedigree, would everyone still be so up in arms over this record?