Best Jury Duty I've Ever Had!
This is Kangaroo Court - Kangaroo Court (Newer Music Tuesday)
There’s nothing better than a debut album. It gives you perspective as to where a band is in their career, the sound they’re trying to achieve, their influences clear, their ambitions laid out bare. There’s lots of factors that can make a debut album great, and that of course depends on the listener. I personally always love a self-titled debut. I love a debut that shows you exactly where it’s going from the very first track. I love a debut with an eye catching cover. Well, guess what folks?? Kangaroo Court has all of these factors and more, and totally knocked it out, no, CLEAR OUT of the park with their rip-roaring, cymbal-crashing, head-bashing, home run of a debut album, This is Kangaroo Court!
I’ve been on a quiet music kick lately, with the likes of Paul Simon, Norah Jones, and Frank Sinatra playing on repeat day after day. However, with as amazing as those artists are, there’s something utterly euphoric about hearing something loud after all those quiet songs. Kangaroo Court does exactly that on the first track “Order”, giving you a quick warning riff before punching you in the face with a total sonic explosion! The fuzzy vocals pair so well with the clean sound of the instruments, and you miss this combination when they pause for a moment of silence. And it’s just that — a moment. They give you a second of quiet so that when they come back, it punches you in the face all over again. Never before have punches in the face been so appealing!
Then comes “Right On”, a song that totally tricks the listener with its slow, steady beginning. The chords are incredibly interesting, and when combined with the constant cymbal hit, it’s just totally hypnotizing. Then they come back, perfect as they always are of course, delivering a punctuating beat that basically forces you to move along to it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a song that I can immediately imagine live like this one; it has those classic loud bits, ones that will thrill the crowd. Then there’s the pulled back guitar part, the one where people will no doubt sync their woops and hollers to. Then they just totally go for it towards the end, and it’s the type of song that you can just feel, the type you can’t help but place yourself in.
I’m hopelessly addicted to Guitar Hero arcade machines. I’ll go to a bowling alley, spend twenty bucks on what seems like too many tokens to spend in an hour, and then go blow it all on Guitar Hero in twenty minutes flat. The fourth track, “Something’s Gotta Give” is without a doubt a song that I would play on a Guitar Hero machine. I think it’s the “Barracuda”-esque plucks of the guitar throughout the verse that give me flashbacks to the game, but all I know is that I would love to hear this song, with its jumping beat and crashing drums and perfect bass, drown out the Crossy Road machine right next to it. And for what it’s worth, I would give the extra tokens to play this song in a heartbeat, since it would obviously be a premium selection.
“All is for All” might be my favorite song off the album. The part of me that’s always hungry for a bass feature was very happily fed by the beginning of this song. I think out of every track on the album, “All is for All” most clearly symbolizes what I mean when I say that Kangaroo Court are masters of sonic explosion. I mean they can just totally SHRED the guitar, totally POUND the drums, make the bass sing and their singing… bass. (I had to.) In all seriousness though, I genuinely find it to be amazing, and it’s the type of song I had to audibly say “holy crap” to. While I do think every aspect of the track adds to its success, I just have to take a minute to talk about the drumming. I mean wow. WOW. It goes so fast your brain can barely keep up with it, and somehow decreases volume without missing anything, then comes back even stronger than before! Without the double time quickness and just absolute raw talent that’s displayed on the drums in “All is for All”, I don’t know if the song would’ve had the same effect.
Listen. I know jury duty is something most people dread being summoned for, but man, if I got summons to go to Kangaroo Court, I would do so in a heartbeat. We’d sit there, the jury and I, and we’d come to a verdict regarding Kangaroo Court. Below is an accurate representation of the headline that would run the day after our decision.
THE VERDICT IS IN: THIS IS KANGAROO COURT HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH BEING ONE OF THE GREATEST DEBUT ALBUMS EVER!
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