The Bluetones Reviewed
The Bluetones
The Bluetones
(Cooking Vinyl)
One of Rush’s more underrated albums — a sentence opener equivalent to “Hi, kick my ass” — was 1993’s Counterparts, which kept the prog under quasi-Talibanic repression and recast themselves as a pop rock band.
Of course, all that was washed away once they returned to the stage, but the spirit of the album is captured on The Bluetones’ fifth, first Stateside. Put plainly, it’s the sound of a Geddy Lee acolyte over languid, soft alt-pop. Now, before you can scream “Placebo!,” there’s no agenda behind The Bluetones aside from simple guitar songs hinting at The Church and Echo & The Bunneymen. True, you won’t want to hear another A/B/A/B rhyme scheme for at least a week, but the road from opener “Surrender” to closer “Wasn’t I Right About You?” is about as effortless as they come, and that’s a tall order considering I’ve already invoked Rush. If you were more a Roll The Bones kinda guy . . .
— Steve Forstneger
