Straight Lines

Thank goodness emo is mostly dead and gone now. These days, new bands making guitar rock, sing with real guts. No more of that whiney kid’s stuff; just driving drums, charging guitars, pounding bass and vocals with true, beefy resonance.

Straight Lines from Pontypridd, Wales has created tough-guy rock & roll since 2009, and just released the tasty new Freaks Like Us. Tom Jenkins sings these songs with youthful enthusiasm, but without any youthful immaturity. Each of these 10 tracks clock in at somewhere around three or four minutes long, which is just enough time to get their points across.

It’s difficult to pick out any one particular theme. Instead, you get the impression these young men just need loud rock music to get under-the-surface feelings off their chest. Heck, it’s better than crime, right? (They may not even know that gangsta rappers are able to combine a love of music with a propensity for criminal activity. In fact, one usually compliments the other).

Songs like “To Be Scene” carry with them a tangible urgency. At times, Straight Lines sounds a little like Green Day. The only real difference is Green Day can also be a little mushy on the inside. Not so with Straight Lines, though. These guys appear to be just as tough underneath, as they are on the outside.

The band waits nearly until the end, until they get to the track “Bury My Thoughts,” before they become even a tad gentler. Rather than pushing ahead, like a train conductor afraid of pulling in late at the next stop, this song lopes along at an easygoing pace.

Although all of these songs are good, there isn’t any one cut that stands above the rest. Therefore, it’s not obvious that any of these songs have potential to be hits. Anyhow, it’s likely Straight Lines don’t really give a rip about hits. They just wanna rock, so by all means let ‘em rock!