SMELL MY PILLOW: "Off Switch"

Rating: 6/10

Label: TSM/SLW 2011

Review by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Smell My Pillow??? Eat My Shorts!!! Truly horrid monicker... but I suppose it's mean to be fun and entertaining? Marc "KWall" Kowalksi is the founder, songwriter, and guitarist of the band and his musical influences include many one hit wonders from the seventies, new wave of the early eighties, namely The Cars, Gary Numan, Devo, Trio, and the grunge of the nineties, namely Soundgarden and Nirvana. Put them all in a blender, shake it all about, wait for the pop explosion and end up amazed by the result? No quite, but it's a nifty little album and the "explosive" material works the best when above lyricist strange hitting wordplay meets its match with tracks built around a quirky template of biting guitarwork and weird sounding choruses (Debbie, Off Switch, My Girl, Urban Decay Package).

I could also pick up influences and the sound of acts such as XTC, Weezer, Pixies. It's very "independent" and against the whole urban enslavment somehow. It's not meant to be "easy-listening" elevator music, rather than head-scratching stuff which makes you stop and think... 'these guys are not quite right'. It's not every man/woman's poison and hardly metal for that matter. But if you're not averse to the strange, try out soundclips at the links below. Unfortunately, they are caught somewhere between 'not bad and 'meh'.

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