Review Summary: She's dancing like an angel, on the coffee table.
If you have no impact on the world around you then did you ever really exist? It’s almost as if the band members after breaking up scoured the internet and removed all references to their time together. They don’t have a website or wikipedia page, lyrics can be found to very few of their songs and even on RYM, where I can get 100 ratings just by singing into a hairbrush, these guys receive almost no attention. Luckily for me though, at least until men in black suits come to my house and remove it, I have a cd proving the Pep Squad was once a real band that created wonderful music.
For being a garage band with moderate musical ability, rough production and little novelty the Squad got by on being able to write very catchy songs. Similar to probable influence the Pixies, this band was able to write impassioned choruses with eccentric lyrics. Both bands have incredible replay value though I’m guessing that both having a backing female vocalist named Kim was purely coincidental.
The Pep Squad did have one other thing going for them and that was perhaps creating their own unique subgenre. I’ll call it emo for the well adjusted. While most of these songs deal with infatuation with the opposite sex they never resort to self pity that plague many other emo bands. Instead this band deals with their yearning by creating reverent singalongs that usually celebrate the subject in the narrative.
True to their name the Pep Squad is also generally a lot more upbeat than most of their peers. They showed that bands could be lovelorn and enamored while not losing their sense of humor. Think of them as a palate cleanser after listening to the more downbeat Pedro the Lion. Kind of the Yin to the Yang of the genre.
I’m not sure how I came to possess this record. I often forget about it for long periods of time and realize it may seem quite irresponsible giving a 5 to an album with obvious flaws and maybe nobody else will but I still get the same thrill every time I put it on and after nearly 15 years with these songs I think it has earned it.
