Burning Itch - Burning Itch

(Tic Tac Totally, 2011)

I hated this record with the passion of a thousand suns before I'd even bothered to throw it on the turntable, and it has sat in my "to listen to" stack for weeks, with its monumentally stupid "naked dude cradling a blow-up doll" cover leering up at me as I continued to pass it over in favor of, well...just about everything else. Ya see, I ordered this thing back at the end of May, tacked onto a Midheaven purchase as an afterthought to my pre-order of the Go Sailor reissue on Slumberland. My love of mid-90s twee pop is more intense than it probably should be for a heterosexual dude in his early thirties, so I was way pumped. The posted shipping date of June 6th came and went, and still no records. I checked the website, and this goddamn Burning Itch LP that I bought because I like Tic Tac Totally and the description sounded kinda neat ("loud, completely unpretentious punk rock") got pushed back to mid-July, late July, and finally August 16th. Yeah dude, for those playing at home, I waited nearly three months to relive some of my favorite teenage indie pop moments because I took a flier on some band I'd never heard before. Any wonder why I'm kinda bitter?! That's as prototypical of a first world problem as you're gonna get, but such is life for an obsessive music nerd with a decent amount of disposable income.

What a pleasant surprise I had in store when I finally got over my grudge and gave Burning Itch a spin, because this compact, ten track firebomb is, um, one of the loudest, most completely unpretentious punk rock records I've heard since the mighty Winchester Mystery House by the Hex Dispensers, my favorite LP of 2009. Punk rock has been done to death in the last thirty-plus years, but it will never stop being refreshing to hear a bunch of young folks dig into the well of the Ramones and Misfits with a gleeful lack of restraint or respect. Vocalist Ian pulls off the same terrible Joey Ramone impression you let rip in your car when no one's looking, and these kids from Knoxville, Tennessee prove that collecting records is still a favorite pastime for punk rockers in nowhere towns. "Dead End Street" mimics the runaway freight train chug of the Weirdos' epochal "Solitary Confinement" and stops on a dime every fifteen seconds or so, managing to sound even more sloppy, dirty, and obnoxious than the original shit they are trying to imitate.

Much like the bands on Nuggets attempted to sound like the Stones and Beatles and Byrds and Who and ended up with amateurish, pale, but enthusiastic and intriguing results, and Burning Itch does the same damn thing with the titans of punk rock. It's telling that the picture under "influences" on their Myspace page is the cover of Killed By Death, since any of the tracks on this self-titled LP could pass for a forgotten single by some band only fifteen record collecting scumbags across the world have heard about. It's not like you can really hear the words amidst the basement show sludge production, but the songs divide their subjects between post-teen angst and fuck-it-all hedonism in equal measure, and really, this is the kinda music that is best suited for shouting along in a drunken, guttural slur anyway. "Brains Fall Out" even has a faint bit of furious acoustic guitar strumming poking its way up through the mix, much like Jay Reatard did on his more introspective cuts, suggesting that these kids didn't stop listening to music made past 1982, and that they might have more depth hiding behind the noise and murk and the "naked dude waking up next to a blow-up doll with a bunch of whip-it chargers" photo on the back sleeve.

If you're looking for introspection and depth, I would direct you to the closing track, "Me Myself and I." It starts with a pounding, cracked-out post-punk disco beat that evokes "Turning Japanese" more than Burning Itch would care to admit, then keeps hammering those strangely danceable beats into your brain. If I may be so bold, it sounds like a curious cross between Wire, the Heartbreakers, and the Misfits, while referencing the same cracked-out post-punk disco beat that runs through the classic album-ending title track of TSOL's brilliant Dance With Me. If legendary rock writer Chuck Eddy taught me anything, it's that album-ending tracks point the way to the future. TSOL took "Dance With Me" and leapt off the deep end with it, morphing into post-punk disco synth rock on one of the best albums of the 80s, Beneath The Shadows. Time will tell if Burning Itch can make the same kind of stylistic jump, but they certainly have enough talent to make it happen.

This record reminds me of a cheeseburger from McDonalds more than anything. It's familiar and generic to a certain extent, but it always tastes the same and always fills you up in a pinch. Sure, it would be better if the pickles weren't so slimy and the onions weren't so old, but the basic ingredients do their job, even if you have to wait in the drive-thru forever to get in in your hands. Punk rock done even slightly well will always crush anything else out there, like 99 percent of the time.