At first I was skeptical about listening to and objectively reviewing the new album from The Leftovers, thinking that the name of their band was as stale as a month old piece of rib eye steak. Honestly, the cockeyed notion of some new power-pop punk posse with the fortifying capability of knocking my checkered socks off at this comatose point in time when punk rock struggles to laboriously breathe from a rusty respirator was slim to fricken none. But holy shit if these auspicious young punks from Portland Maine of all places didn’t make my weathered brain numb like a night spent sipping Crown Royal whiskey from a flask under the right field bleachers while the herd of nerds boogie down inside the high school gymnasium at the ice cream social.
Kurt Baker (bass, vocals), Andrew Rice (guitar, vocals), and Adam Woronoff (drums) formed in 2002 and shoved their first full length Stop, Drop, Rock N Rol down the throats of all wanting mouths in 2004, gaining attention from old school ears like that of Larry Livermore, founder of Lookout Records. If that prominent imprint of the early 90s So Cal punk scene hadn’t squandered all of their funds and gone belly up (after Green Day yanked their back catalog) they would be the ideal home for these adorable young whippersnappers from Portland Maine, where the most punk thing that a kid could do would be to spit on a sidewalk or turn right on red.
“We met at the party tonight” are the first lyrics that come ringing out of On The Move, a scalding burst of twenty-something angst which knocks a clock off the wall with twenty-eight minutes of thrilling power-pop. Every song on this spectacular recording is as catchy as Tuberculosis on an airplane. Verse-chorus-verse, back up vocals in just the right places, NOFX said it best – “please play this song on the radio.”
If your dopey ears miss the snotty ring from the thwack of Descendents, Bouncing Souls, Mr. T Experience, John Cougar Concentration Camp, J Church, Riverdales, Wynona Riders, or Screeching Weasel then you should without a diggity doubt scrounge up enough change to seize On The Move from The Leftovers. I’m not only impress but ecstatic to boast about these charming young twerps who unexpectedly bedazzled my grumpy old ears. What fun bastards these boys truly are! I just hope that they stick to the Pennsylvania-based Rally Records, rather than end up licensing their music to some shitty new WB series.
Recorded at Smart Studios in Madison Wisconsin by Ben Weasel (he’s an asshole, Ben Weasel he’s a jerk), these thirteen atomic bombs will blast those stupid piercings out of your rotten face like a squishy white pimple, savagely transporting your adolescent physique back to the glorious years of all-ages shows when vibrant young kiddos pogoed and moshed and wrecked circle pits with clinched fists and spiked wrists at fucking 924 Gilman Street or in the goddamn Stop-N-Slurp parking lot.
