Rock N Roll Ice Cream

You could force-fit Japanther into the "earnest" genre. They mean all the ride your bike / change your life things you'll hear from and about them. But then the music is so damn rooted in dream-catchy '60s Wilson-Spectre melodies that the result is more a punk impulse-ethos channeled into crazily simple tunes with a two-note timelessness that just pushes all our fuckin' buttons. It's almost too much. So wrong but all right. Compare, e.g., to that New Country song you came across on the radio that made you realize new shit about yourself and your musical tastes, maybe. In addition to all that, we hear stuff like the Screamers, Misfits and Ramones all over Japanther tunes. And credit them for opening up museums and galleries from Missoula to Vienna to their oeuvre. Whether you catch them in front of a BMX ramp at the Whitney or at a fire-hazard basement show, it's the same phones and the same connection. Rock 'N Roll Ice Cream is Japanther's 9th or 10th long playing album, depending on your math. It's got immediate hits ("Not at War," "Surfin' Coffin"), guests (Anita Sparrows from The Soviettes) and some misplaced love for the film Point Break.