Cincinnati, Ohio's The Greenhornes are one of the top bands in today's garage rock scene, or at least they deserve to be. Chances are you've never heard of them. Imagine The Rolling Stones first few albums, and every 60's garage rock band you can think of. Mix them together and you get The Greenhornes. With 2 full albums, one EP, and a Greatest Hits, The Greenhornes have a significant amount of solidly written, good music behind them. On this album, there are five of them...
Craig Fox-Guitar And Vocals
Patrick Keeler-Drums
Eric Stein-Guitar
Jack Lawrence-Bass
Jared McKinney-Keyboard And Vocals
Enough of that. Onto the review...
The Greenhornes-The Greenhornes
Strong Points Of The Album
1) Whoever produced the album did so well, making it sound just like an album that would be from the 60’s garage rock era, which I’m sure The Greenhornes wanted. Every instrument is heard clearly, even though the music is quite noisy and distorted most of the time.
2) All of the instrumentation on this album is done well, with each part mixing in well with the others. The tone of the instruments is also great sounding to me, with the guitar cutting through the top with a trebly tone and the bass coming in and holding up the bottom end quite well. Everything seems equally balanced.
3) The songs “Lies” and “Can’t Stand It” represent the best of The Greenhornes to me, hard, fast, riff-based rockers that blow away the rest of the songs on this album. If you could only listen to two tracks from this album over and over, it would be these two, guaranteed.
4) This album brings back the back-to-the-basics classic rock feel to modern music. It utterly destroys all the pop-punk and so-called “rock music” of today. Not that some of that music isn’t good, it’s just that the majority is overproduced, overplayed, MTV safe garbage. Anyway, onto the weak points.
Weak Points Of The Album
1) Some of the slower songs, like “Can’t You See” and “Lonely Feeling,” tend to drag on for a very long time and get boring very fast.
2) “Stay Away Girl.” This song is slow, dull, and bad. There’s no reason for this song to even be on this album.
3) The background vocals seem to be, to put it bluntly, not very good at all. It sounds like they’re trying to sing, but it just comes out as sort of talking. The only song this isn’t true for is “Lies.”
Overall The Album Is…
Fun, rocking, and perfect for just making you feel good and remember that there is high-quality music out there, despite what you may see and hear on the radio and TV. While there are no mind-blowing songs or anything terribly original or new, and some of the songs sound the same as you listen to them more and more,*The Greenhornes manages to get a 3.5/5 from me just because it is so enjoyable. The music just makes you want to smile and nod your head along. So, track by track ratings are…
Can’t Stand It---4.5/5
Shadow Of Grief---3/5
Stay Away Girl---1/5
Inside Looking Out---3/5
It’s My Soul---3.5/5
Let Me Be---4/5
Lies---5/5
Nobody Loves You---4/5
Lonely Feeling---2.5/5
High Time Baby---4/5
Shame And Misery---3/5
Can’t You See---2.5/5
Overall,
The Greenhornes gets a
3.5/5
