A big part of why I do this is to discover new music. Attic Salt are a new band to me, and I decided to pick up Get Wise after checking out the first couple singles.
The band, based in Springfield, IL, play peppy pop-punk. While that subgenre seems to have a surprising amount of different meanings, this is the crisp, clean and bouncy pop kind. The style that is played by people with bangs, leather jackets, and a good chunk of the Lookout catalog on their shelves or hard drive. The vocalists alternate songs and/or verses, and often harmonize together. The drums are predictable and use fills to give character and the Ramones chords do the heavy lifting.
While at its core I’d define Attic Salt’s sound as of the peppy, pogo variety, it’s also nuanced. The record doesn’t have 10 Ramones copycat tracks. “Mud” kicks off with an emotional acoustic intro, “Undiscovered” is in a ‘00s indie rock key, and on several of the tracks, it’s the harmonizing that takes the lead -- such as in “Washington Street,” where the female/male combo recalls memories of Bullets To Broadway. Personally, Currie’s powerful delivery has a way of cutting through the chords with a vulnerable confidence that hits hard. A good example would be “Fool 4 U,” which has a vocal lead for the first verse, then builds to a ‘90s-style chorus that has a hint of groove underlying the more predictable power chords. Attic Salt understands that while Ramones-core has a lot of positives, it gets redundant fast. They mix up their sound nicely while sticking to the basic formula. They mix it up quite a bit, really, for a 10-track record and it works more often than it doesn’t. On occasion, as in “Snow Day,” it gets a little ballad-y and dull.
Overall the sound is accessible and clean, but there is extra emotional depth and musical variety that keeps the band from easily falling into a dismissible subgenre shelf. It falls somewhere between new era pop-punk like The Rational Anthem and the old leather jacket classics like Screeching Weasel.
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