The
Retreads are a young quartet from Muncie, IN, home of Ball State University and not much else. They clearly know their way around the punk vinyl section of their local used record store. (And the back room of the local used book store as well, apparently: the remarkably snotty "Don't Need You" features the deathless couplet "I got some Swanks, I got some Hustlers, I got some Barely Legals too/Tonight I'm gonna jerk it and I don't need you!," a statement of teenage independence that either the
Dead Boys'
Stiv Bators or the
Dictators'
Andy Shernoff would have been proud to write.) There are few musical references here that post-date the first couple of
Black Flag EPs, and for all the straight punk touchstones here, there's also plenty of
Cheap Trick (one song is called "We're Arrived (Live at Budokan)"),
Blue Öyster Cult (the suicidal power ballad "I Quit"),
AC/DC (note that album title again) and other nods to the hipper side of '70s hard rock. The early
Replacements are an inescapable point of comparison for this brand of blue-collar Midwestern punk'n'roll, but the
Retreads lack
Paul Westerberg's sensitive side and outsider/underdog status. Indeed, the album's strongest anthems, "Doin' It for the Dudes" and "Kids Wanna Rock," are all about the gang-like inclusiveness of a band, a team, or a scene. At a point where the "let's talk about ME!" ethos of emo has primacy in indie rock culture, there's something refreshing about that we're all in it together concept. ~ Stewart Mason