Rawk is Dead. Long Live Rawk or Why Music Bloggers like to Blow Each Other and Talk About It.

Open Your Heart is a great expansive guitar driven record that will take you from early 70’s Thin Lizzy melodies and Buzzcocks punk pop to Sonic Youth guitar freak outs and back again.
It’s an inviting expansive album that just wants you to hit play and sit back and enjoy the ride.
I’m not old enough to recall Stiff Little Fingers or all the great little pop punk bands of the 70’s but hearing this record is what I imagine that must have felt like.
These guys have an open all ages vibe to their sound.
Dueling guitars and staccato drums solos. Instrumentals that descend into guitar skronk and feedback and bursts of hard rock melody and soaring choruses, I love this fucking album.
It just makes me happy to be a music fan and I feel these guys share the same feelings.
On the other hand everything you read about these guys (men) likes to state how they represent the return of guitar driven rock or how the death of guitar driven rock has been greatly exaggerated.
So rather than fall into one of those 2 camps let me just ask you one question- “When listening to a record do you care if it’s heavy on guitars or turntables or synths or acoustic?” Or does it just have to tickle your soul and make your heart soar in that way that only pop can?
Does it matter whether that soaring comes from a record being scratched and a well-placed sample or an acoustic guitar strummed or a violin stroked or a guitar turned up to 11?
Who cares how you get your kicks?
Right, so turn this record up and drown out the hype cuz “I wanna see you write a love song / I wanna see you going down / I wanna see you when you try so hard / I wanna see you when you turn it around”
But most of all I wanna see your heart soar…