This review involves a lot of name-dropping. So don’t say you weren’t warned.

And, really, how else to consider Free Energy? The Philadelphia-based blogosphere favorite doesn’t strive for originality, nor even hipster cachet: You can hear Television or Big Star all you want in the quintet’s peppy, big-guitar sound, but really, these guys are all about what you hear on “corporate classic rock stations.” Why it works — at least on record in mp3s — has as much to do with the group’s nonironic approach as its mindless raison d’être and taut, oft-inspired songwriting. We’re understandably skeptical of “woo-ooh,” “oh-oh,” and “hey alright” choruses, but it’s refreshing that Free Energy can actually sell them. Whether that places the band, in those gilded annals of nostalgia rock, closer to The Strokes or The Darkness, I can’t say.

In a quick, fairly energetic, and underattended show at the Black Cat downstairs last night, Free Energy cribbed T. Rex’s “Mambo Sun” almost verbatim and sometimes invoked The Stooges, but mostly, it reveled in the stuff of Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, early Tom Petty, and (most centrally) Thin Lizzy — think big, loud, elemental, and poppy. Objectively, it was perfect: Hooks breathed, guitars sirened, cowbells clanged. Skinny as death and neon as fuck, singer Paul Sprangers pranced and strutted and crooned, a little bit Iggy Pop, a little less Julian Casablancas. And I was utterly nonplussed.

Read More “Hey Alright: Free Energy @ Black Cat” »

Pastiche can be a funny thing: When Paul Sprangers and Scott Wells played fuzzy, proggy slacker pop in the St. Paul, Minn., band Hockey Night, I figured that as long as Stephen Malkmus keeps pumping out decent-or-better albums every few years, my brain just doesn’t have the RAM for a Pavement Lite.

If this is beginning to sound like a half-hearted endorsement, I’ll stop and say this: Sprangers and Wells’ new outfit, Free Energy, makes anthemic, insanely catchy music with a hefty, forgivable debt to your favorite ’70s pre- (but not proto-) punk bands — think Thin Lizzy’s chutzpah, Cheap Trick’s contagiousness, and the wide, romantic eyes of The Raspberries. The much-buzzed-about group (now based in Philly) recently signed with New York’s dance-punk mavens DFA, which some people find strange or something, since Free Energy isn’t a dance band. Bullshit. I’m shimmying in my desk chair just writing about these guys. What they lack in originality (plus ça change… and all that), they more than make up for with insistent songwriting, strutting rhythms, and insane hooks.

Free Energy brings its old-is-new-again rock to the Black Cat backstage tomorrow, and the show, also with Bear In Heaven and D.C.’s BLDGS, is well worth your $10. Unless, of course, you’re set on getting your Gossip Girl on with Cobra Starship instead.

This blog has already covered Free Energy’s self-titled single, so check out the hometown-loving video (and show deets) after the jump. (I lived in Philly for two years, so sometimes I gotta rep, too.)

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Atlas Sound/Panda Bear: “Walkabout”
If you were among those who downloaded the half-finished version of Atlas Sound’s (aka Bradford Cox) new record, Logos, after he accidentally leaked it a several months ago, well, shame on you. Luckily, Cox went back and changed a few things. Apparently “Walkabout,” a collaboration with Animal Collective’s Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), didn’t even exist back then. From its burbling sampled beat (taken from The Dovers’ “What Am I Going to Do“) to its drowsy electronic interludes, it’s pretty sweet.

Kurt Vile: “Overnight Religion”
Philadelphia songwriter and mega-producer Daniel Lanois are privy to the same secret: If you take the music of the baby-boomers and run it through a ton of effects, it sounds cool again. Hey, don’t laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan on Oh, Mercy. And it works for Kurt Vile, too. A little bit of reverb and delay goes a long way here, turning the strummy “Overnight Religion,” into something spacey and meditative. And probably at only a fraction of what Peter Gabriel had to pay, too.

Beastie Boys f. Nas: “Too Many Rappers”
Yeah, the Beastie Boys are old, but at least they aren’t pretending otherwise. “Oh my god/ just look at me/ grandpa been rapping since ‘83,” raps Mike D Ad-Rock on this new track, apparently debuted at this year’s Bonnaroo festival. But where the Beastie Boys used to be bratty, here they’re just sounding cranky–about contemporary rappers, holograms, and Wolf Blitzer. Ad-Rock, again, lays out the group’s beef in articulate and unambiguous language. “All you crap rappers/ you’re rapping like crap.

Free Energy: “Free Energy”
A big curve ball from DFA, the label who, up until this point at least, mainly concentrated on producing and releasing post-punk and retro-disco records. From the sound this song, though, Free Energy’s influences predate all that club junk by at least ten years. The finger prints of Thin Lizzy, Big Star, and Shoes–bands that have never been closer than a thousand yards to a remix–are all over this. There is, however, still some cowbell going on.