Tsar

Band-Girls-Money

BY Steve EnglishPublished Aug 1, 2005

There are over 2500 artists listed in The All Music Guide to Rock, and the influence of almost all of them is dutifully referenced somewhere in Band-Girls-Money, the second album proper from L.A. trash brats Tsar. Cribbing their stupid catchy melodies from Cheap Trick, their glam-tastic cock-rock swagger from Destroyer-era Kiss and their charmingly sub-moronic ramalama from the Ramones, they’re the punk’s "loud, fast rules!” ethos in the inked-and-eyelinered flesh. And while Band-Girls-Money shows absolutely zero artistic development from their eponymous 2000 debut, it’s hard to find fault with a record that pops and rocks with such gleeful audacity. "Wanna Get Dead” is a full-contact Bay City Roller derby, gob-smacking glam-punk bubblegum set to a restless, ADD-frazzled party-hard pulse. Elsewhere, the spastic skronk of "Startime” morphs into a throbbing ’80s pop-metal bitch slap to Sunset Strip poseurs (best lyric: "Go home and watch some TiVO, fuckers!”) complete with its own brass section. This is the kind of gloriously shambolic cock-rocket that gives Robin Black the night sweats.
(TVT)

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