With
Lend You a Hand, the Tight Bro's From Way Back When try to compress as much rock & roll fury as they possibly can within the meager confines of 37 minutes. Much like a destitute alcoholic sitting in a tavern with a beer-soaked bar rag, the Tight Bro's positively wring as much rawk & roll as they can from what they hold in their hands. The music is so propulsive that the listener is either reduced to a quivering mass of burnt-out nerve endings and burst eardrums or possessed by a near-religious compulsion to drink a lot of beer and slam around until crucial bones are fractured. Crank rock soaks the disc, as if one somehow melded the Candy Snatchers, the MC5, early
AC/DC, and
Lynyrd Skynyrd. Think the Cherry Valence, or the Didjits.
Lend You a Hand is track after track of rawk, a relentless onslaught of pounding drums and double-guitar antics. With a listen, one can almost see Dave and Quitty, the guitar players, bent over backwards on stage while singer Jared runs around, screeching and shrieking to bring the crowd to the intensity of a near riot. Two of the crucial tracks on the album, "Bring Your Thunder" and "Nose in the Corner," are a perfect distillation of what they do -- the individual elements not only combine for a sum greater than the parts, but threaten to shudder, shake, and disintegrate into a thousand directions from the overdriven sonic symphony. It's that damn good. ~ Jeremy Salmon