Run Run Run – Endless Winter

Run Run Run – Endless Winter
Song and Dance – 2006
Rock
Waardering: ****

And the weekend has come and gone and there was no time to rest or provide a weekend break record for this Rancho De La Luna month we are having. It was a whirlwind of liquor and an endless parade of weirdness. But we’re not here to talk about all that crap; that’s not why we are here. We are here to talk about a four / five piece indie rock band from Los Angeles called Run Run Run. It is the brainchild of lead singer/guitarist Xander Smith, formerly of Otherstarpeople. The band was formed after some rousing recording sessions with the late Fred Drake at Rancho de la Luna. During these sessions enough material was recorded for a couple of albums and the first of this was released later that year. After this ok enough debut EP called Drizzle in 2003, Run Run Run`s first full-length effort has a little more meat on its bones, though admittedly it`s a pleasure that feels caught in a tension between 1969, 1989, and the present. The line of descent that runs from the Brian Jonestown Massacre to the Warlocks and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has resulted in a southern California psych rock style that seems convinced that nothing much has happened since Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer were the mayors of Sunset Strip, and it grows wearying to hear the same moves redone, however enthusiastically. Run Run Run, though unable to shake that jones completely, also bring in a guitar pop glaze that recalls more recent forebears from the U.K. plus an appreciation of crisp, punchy delivery that ensures the band doesn`t always want to sound like it`s still the Vietnam War -- calling a song "Wire" might well have been a tribute. At its most brisk, Endless Winter has an enjoyable kick -- "Wait Up for You" has a sweetly killer arrangement for the chorus, while songs like "Try" and "2 A.M." find them doing an Interpol move with choppy riffs and steady but tense rhythms. It also manages a neat trick by getting better as it goes along, so credit to whoever sequenced it -- by the time "Song and Dance" appears with its queasy drones and neo-shoegaze cascade, both band and album are on a total roll. Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising moment is the album`s one cover version -- Mazzy Star`s hushed early-`90s classic "Fade into You," which Run Run Run actually transform into a new arrangement that sounds like them instead of simply cloning the original. They haven`t nailed a perfect album, but Run Run Run are in a good place to get to somewhere new down the road. But that something new has jet to appear. For their 2009 album Pico wasn’t really able to get the blood boiling…

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