CD Reviews

The Color Fred

Bend To Break | Equal Vision

By MIKAEL WOOD | December 3, 2007

3.0 Stars

Not unlike Dave Grohl back when he was best known as the drummer in Nirvana, Taking Back Sunday guitarist Fred Mascherino gets a kick out of writing simple power-pop tunes that don’t make much sense within the tortured-emo confines of his day-job rock band. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Bend To Break, the debut by Mascherino’s terribly named solo project the Color Fred, sounds a whole lot like Foo Fighters. (Indeed, more than Rivers Cuomo or Jeremy Enigk, Grohl is shaping up as the current emo generation’s #1 influence — see also the recent album by Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie’s new band the Almost.) There’s nothing on Bend To Break with the psychological complexity (or the arena-rock bombast) of TBS’s best stuff, but Mascherino has a knack for rhythmic snap and melodic sap that lifts his material above the similarly situated fare available by the ton on MySpace.

The Color Fred + Straylight Run + Dear and The Headlights + Cassino | ICC Church, 30 Gordon Street, Allston| December 11 | 617.782.8120

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