There are few surprises on
Stereotyperider's covers album
Under the Influence, Vol. 1, from the unimaginative title on down. Would anyone who has heard
Stereotyperider's previous three albums' worth of post-hardcore indie rock be surprised to discover that they really like
Archers of Loaf, the
Pixies,
Fugazi and the
Descendents? Songs by all four of those bands, along with second-string grunge-rockers
Seaweed, the proto-emo Quicksand and
the Cure, appear here, all of them delivered in
Stereotyperider's effective but occasionally monochromatic style. It's
the Cure who come off the best, actually: their early single "Jumping Someone Else's Train" was a churning slab of dark-hued post-punk, and
Stereotyperider nimbly transform it without losing the best qualities of the original. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of their faceless version of the
Pixies' classic "Where Is My Mind?," which somehow comes out sounding like the kind of third-rate semi-emo alterna rock that the music supervisors of The OC must get pitched on a daily basis. The rest of the album is pitched between those two poles, luckily with most of the tracks closer to the former than the latter.
Under the Influence, Vol. 1 was undoubtedly fun to record, and
Stereotyperider fans interested in exploring the group's influences can use it as a jumping-off point, but it's definitely a minor effort. ~ Stewart Mason