For all the negativity often surrounding the state of today’s music industry, there’s still an abundance of great bands out there just waiting to be discovered.
If anything, there are probably more working musicians now than ever before. Yes there’s plenty of crap about, but there’s excellent music to be found if you look hard enough. It’s just a shame that in today’s crowded industry, genuine pleasures such as Tijuana Panther’s fourth album Wayne Interest can get lost in the shuffle.
Opener ‘Four Horsemen’ quickly establishes the band’s general surf-pop/garage sound which they then proceed to deviate from with reckless abandon. Lead single ‘Cherry Street’ comes across as a sort of harder-edged ‘Age of Consent’ by New Order, and is all the better for it, sounding at once effortless and memorable. Much like the rest of the album, it has its own distinctive sound and sounds rooted in classic pop sensibilities while maintaining their raw garage sound.
The only real disappointment is the album’s title track ‘Wayne Interest’, which oddly enough is probably the only song that feels like filler across all fourteen tracks. This is swiftly forgotten though as soon as it gives way to ‘Money Jar’, the clear high-point of the record that’s as lyrically elegant as it is melodic.
A record of the sort that doesn’t come along nearly often enough these days, Tijuana Panthers’ fourth album owes as much to the classic pop sensibilities of The Beach Boys as it does to their more obvious influences. It’s the sort of record that should sell by the truckload over the summer. It won’t, of course...but it should.