| CD REVIEW Joe Coffee |
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Band: Joe Coffee Disgusted with the amount of Metal bands claiming to be part of the Hardcore scene in New York City, singer Paul Bearer (formerly of Sheer Terror, who’d ceased to exist in 1998) initiated Joe Coffee in 2000, with the explicit effort of not playing Hardcore per se. First activities by the band were recorded in history books early the following year. Even then things were kept pretty low-profile (there weren’t even a lot of live performances) until 2003, when the guys recorded an 8-track demo titled Bright As The Stars We’re Under…initially simply released by a friend of the band. Street Anthem Records got wind of it, made a deal with the band, and re-issued the demo as a mini-album in March of 2004. Things stíll remained pretty low-key for the band afterwards, even if they got to play a couple of high-profile gigs (among which a support to DropKick Murphys on some St. Patrick’s Day) and even went over to Europe for a shhort tour during 2006. With a line-up comprising guitarists Rap Canapini and Rob Seale, bassist Mike Welles, and drummer Eric Arce (all people who have sóme repute in the NYC Hardcore scene) the band finally got round to recording a full-length album (well, it’s got 11 tracks, and it’s just over 33 minutes in length, so that doés constitute a full-length album, right?) during last year, and that’s what we’ve now got on our platter! Although released through a label normally known for its Hardcore and Rawdy Punk Rock releases, one would be wrong to dismiss Joe Coffee’s music as either Punk or Hardcore. Instead expect a classy but raw Hard Rock with ties in Americana, Blues, Garage…and a connection in Punk/ Hardcore through the lyrics! Perhaps the best way to describe the music is to mention that the guys succeed in covering Small Faces’ “Get Yourself Together” quite admirable (with a raw flavouring of their own), and that you can see the rest of the album in the same vein. Well…not completely, because there’s a semi-ballad with the much calmer “The Good Life (I’ve Seen It)” and a ballad as such with the classy “I Don’t Want This No More” (with some of Bearer most emotional siging). Although there’s no credits for it, a horn section embellishes “Baby’s Coming Home Today” and lifts it to a level beyond what it would’ve been without! Other attention attractors are “You Gonna Make Me Do Bad” which opens with Paul giving a rough voiced spoken word banter, and the album closing “Done And Done”, played with an intensity in both music and vocals which puts it close to Hardcore, in spite of the band’s concious effort to gear away from that genre! An album which deserves getting a top place in the year-lists of the more open-minded (usually they’re the more intelligent kind too, taking notice of the meaning of lyrics…and be sure Joe Coffee’s texts deserve being analized) Punk and Hardcore fans alike…as welll as lovers of a rawer Rock ‘n’ Roll based Hard Rock! Check it all out by surfing to myspace.com/joecoffee, where the band posted 2 songs off the new album, one off their EP, and a previously unrecorded one (at least as far as I could assertain) 98/100 Tony. |