Rock Kills Kid - Are You Nervous? Album Review

Rock Kills Kid
Are You Nervous?
Reprise Records
Released: April 17th.
Album Review

So what's in a name? Well a lot normally, as any betting man will tell you that any band using a moniker describing something grisly but humorous in a black way will usually have emo tendencies, any band preceded by "The" will have Strokes and Libertines fascinations and any group consisting of a one letter word such as "Duplicitous" will have a distinct Joy Division addiction. So when presented with a CD by a newly signed LA quintet called Rock Kills Kid, my initial reaction was to reach for the Anadins, turn the volume down to two and grit my teeth. Horrible monstrous metal here we come…except it doesn't.

Instead what we have here are five American early twenty-somethings infinitely obsessed by all things 1980s and mostly British, which is just about as far away from the expected genre of (named) choice as possible.

In a kind of post-Killers way, 'Are You Nervous?' contains reference points to the usual suspects, so 'Joshua Tree' period U2 is picked out and ravaged for the opening 'Paralyzed', while Duran-esque guitars and Depeche Mode synths glam up the fortuitous salvo of 'Midnight'. Elsewhere, the chiming guitars of the title track and 'Breakfast Club' soundtrack-alike posturing of 'Run Like Hell' aren't charmless by name or nature, and singer Jeff Tucker does manage to sound both convincing and unique in his vocal delivery, which is no mean feat considering the number of bands around since the summer of 2004 doing this kind of thing.

'Are You Nervous?' probably won't win any awards for originality, and in places does sound quite samey, but at least it shows that the larger side of the pond is still looking to its' 53rd state for divine inspiration, even if the queue hasn't quite subsided just yet.

3/5
Dom Gourlay