CD Review

Dates and times may be arbitrary human attempts to impose order amid the chaos, but the precision with which musical fads shift every time the ball drops can’t be mere coincidence. After two years of retro-synth revisionism and mascara-lined emo, proper rock and roll may well be coming back around for another shot, and Manchester’s Nine Black Alps are already busy stomping the world’s blood-drenched keyboards into bits.

While a few Manhattan hipster melodies slip into Everything Is, most of the album grins with its split lips wide open and missing teeth flashing. The whiplash drums of the aptly titled “Cosmopolitan” punch the lo-fi, Strokesy guitar intro square in the mouth, and “Unsatisfied” and “Headlights” juxtapose teen spirit melodies with heavy punk breaks, letting the boys thrash around while their girlfriends swoon in the back.

Even the grittiest tunes shine with a pop polish, but the bass and kick drum eventually pound their way to the surface and crack the melodic veneer. Plaster walls splinter under the weight of opener “Get Your Guns,” and by the time “Ironside” revisits the big, soaring punk chorus, the dreamy radio pop bridge has long since crumbled to dust.

If the first years of the decade were a return to visceral garage rock, and if trends really do move in cycles, Nine Black Alps signal a come-around, and the pendulum swings a little wider this time. Everything Is is big arena rock with a proletarian spirit—Appetite-era GnR without the Sunset Strip clichés and power ballads—and Nine Black Alps has every intention of the sleeping beast from its slumber beneath sheeshy uptown highrises, but not before they shake the foundations a little themselves first.