 |
| (Photo courtesy of tomlowell.wordpress.com) |
Blockhead was a great pop-punk/punk band from Manchester, NH that I unfortunately don't know too much about. Thankfully, Notches is (sonically) a pretty close spiritual successor to this band (even though they don't share members), but I digress. I never got a chance to see Blockhead perform, although I recall seeing many flyers for shows at the Dover Brickhouse and Slaughterhouse 5 along with Georgian back in the golden days of Myspace. This is actually the exact flyer I was thinking of, pretty cool that I found it again. As you can see, homies played with a lot of bands I've already warmly mentioned about on this site, like Cowboys are Indians and Pathos.
Anyway, the 2008 Demo is pretty unremarkable, just sounds like young bucks playing pop-punk. I should mention that when I say "pop-punk" I mean bands like The Ergs, not Man Overboard or whatever else it is that qualifies as pop-punk now. The split with Georgian shows a dramatic jump in quality for Blockhead, both in terms of song-writing and audio fidelity. That, and I'll Leave This Behind, which is undoubtedly their finest and most realized work (although, re-listening now, the kick drum is driving me crazy), are both excellent testaments to catchy and melodic punk that was paved by Osker, Dear Landlord, etc. There's probably a dozen closer comparisons that I could make (vocals are far less gruff than Dear Landlord) but unfortunately I'm out of my element here. They released their music through John Wilkes Booth Records, a NH-based label that was (is?) operated by one of the dudes from Billy Raygun. Seriously, all those dudes formed the tightest circle of legit pop-punk bands. And like true punx, Blockhead's tunes are free, so grab 'em.
 |
| (Photo courtesy of tomlowell.wordpress.com) |
Anyway, the 2008 Demo is pretty unremarkable, just sounds like young bucks playing pop-punk. I should mention that when I say "pop-punk" I mean bands like The Ergs, not Man Overboard or whatever else it is that qualifies as pop-punk now. The split with Georgian shows a dramatic jump in quality for Blockhead, both in terms of song-writing and audio fidelity. That, and I'll Leave This Behind, which is undoubtedly their finest and most realized work (although, re-listening now, the kick drum is driving me crazy), are both excellent testaments to catchy and melodic punk that was paved by Osker, Dear Landlord, etc. There's probably a dozen closer comparisons that I could make (vocals are far less gruff than Dear Landlord) but unfortunately I'm out of my element here. They released their music through John Wilkes Booth Records, a NH-based label that was (is?) operated by one of the dudes from Billy Raygun. Seriously, all those dudes formed the tightest circle of legit pop-punk bands. And like true punx, Blockhead's tunes are free, so grab 'em.
DISCOGRAPHY
I'll Leave This Behind | Stream/Download
Split CD/Zine with Georgian | Stream/Download
2008 Demo | Stream/Download
OTHER LINKS
No comments:
Post a Comment