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It's tough coming up with anything new in punk rock that isn't going to sound as if you were trying too hard to reinvent something that's as basic as it gets. Occult Detective Club know this, and that's why their sophomore effort works so well. Dive into as few chords as possible is the motto, keep the drum rolls constant, and deliver snappy lines like "Until our bitter end/You can buy my cigarettes/We'll drain our bank accounts/Cause that's what love's about" somewhere within the allotted time frame. The dozen tracks total less than a half-hour — a slap in the face to the quartet's base of Denton, Texas, where everything is supposed to be bigger. Songs abound about government ("Oh, Bureaucracy"), getting out of a one-horse town, and young love ("Young Lovers" — duh). Ska creeps in, as it tends to do in these affairs, and not as if it could ever happen but at times it does seem the Bosstones are trying to choke out the Clash. It's from the latter that ODC draw much of their influence, with anti-establishment sentiment often the underlying theme, as on "Running from the Red Squad." Because even if it's paint by numbers, the popo still don't like punkers.
