Model Citizens - Model Citizens
Tracks :- You’re So Great No Life, No Sex and No Beer Angel Seen That Scene Funk Moonlight Midnight Ridin’ Love’s Enough Tehanalea Big W Blue Witch Hunt Candy Taconic Park East Total playing time : 50:58 m:s Producers : Ted Hyland & George Goodwin Label : Rodell Records Year : 1996
The Model Citizens, in which 3 out of the 4 members are brothers, started out life as a covers band and eventually started writing their own material. If you check out their web page, you’ll discover that the band describe themselves as ‘kick ass New York rock and roll’ and quote influences such as Zeppelin, Sabbath and The Rolling Stones.
When you listen to first song ‘You’re So Great’, you can detect the Stones influence. But, if I listen to the likes of Hanoi Rocks I get a kinda Stones vibe from their music as well. The overall sound of the album reminds me of the NWOBHM. It's the sound rather than the style of music. Ren Hoek, who sent me the CD, described the music as 'dated classic rock sounding'. I can't think of a better description.
The singer is OK, but nothing more than that. His phrasing etc comes across as being just ‘too polite’. Somehow the singing just doesn’t sound natural enough for my tastes.
The acoustic guitars are brought out for the start of Angel, before the songs progresses into a more rocking playout. It’s the first song that made an impression on me. I have to wait until Ridin’ before I come across something else I enjoy listening to. This one has a good chorus.
It’s almost as if they’ve been keeping something in reserve for the end of the album. With ‘Witch Hunt’ the Sabbath influence shows itself. It crops up again on the last song ‘Taconic Park East’, but this time with touch of Manowar thrown in. It’s towards the end of this one that the guys rock out. Sandwiched between these two is the quirky Candy, which features some Henry Rollins style vocals on the chorus.
To be honest this ‘kick ass Rock and Roll’ didn’t kick my ass (so to speak). I’ve got a feeling some of the energy in the music got lost in the recording studio. I’m sure a bigger recording budget and some more experience in a recording studio would produce better results. Those last few songs mentioned in the previous paragraph would benefit from a beefier production.
I seem to have picked out all the non-typical songs as my highlights, I'm just not into the 'dated classic rock' style numbers that dominate the album.
Rating 5/6
P.S. If you’re interested in getting a copy of the this then check out their web site. You can get there from my Links page. It’s worth checking out for the animations alone.
