Review Summary: All surf no wave punk rock do it go!
Quite a few adjectives come to mind in describing the guitar line that starts "Last Time", track one of the self-titled LP from San Francisco beach-punks
Face the Rail. Topping the list would most likely be fuzzy, sloppy, twangy, cautious, and somewhat restrained, to name just a few. Most fortunately for us, the latter two descriptors aren't relevant for long, and after about another half minute and a subtle "fuck yeah",
Face the Rail launch into twenty-five minutes of pure surf punk bliss.
The self-titled comes complete with all the surf punk essentials: jangling fuzzed-out guitar lines that threaten to shred your face off, songs about skateboarding and being a loser so skateboarding some more, lyrics chock-full of stammered invectives and anti-establishment remarks, etc.
Face the Rail lay it all on the line, the song titles really serving as tell-alls for the record's content, but that's exactly the point here. Play hard, skate hard, maybe try to make ends meet somewhere in the process. Oh, and don't be a dick, that's definitely important too.
Face the Rail is bodacious and radical and groovy, but most importantly, it's a good fuckin' time. The whole ordeal never slips back into the more subdued state of the opener's intro, and FTR pile on track after track of 100 M.P.H. beach'd-out punk rock. If the salty raw passion of "Violence" and its no frills chorus (repeat "I HATE VIOLENCE!" a bunch of times) isn't palpable enough to taste, well then I guess I just don't get the definition of palpable, nor should I really care. Or take "What A Drag", the way more rad surf punk version of any "I don't wanna grow up" anthem you've ever heard before - it's essential and it's awesome. To be honest, I haven't a clue what track nine "Space Invaders" is about, but I'd guess it's got something to do with space invaders, and I don't really care anyway because the track rules. And that's exactly what
Face the Rail are going for - who cares, as long as it rules. Grab your zip zinger kids, it's time to skate.
"
AHHH I ride my skateboard, every fucking day! Yeah we fucking skate!"
