Bamboo Kids — what a great name. It’s right there with the Itchy Brothers, or (RIP) the Exploding Hearts. Figures that this scraggly NYC trio would find the right moniker — their eponymous debut was recorded in glorious crap-tone, features a clutch of two minute songs stealing cleverly from ’77 punk and red light district new wave throb, and detonated in garage rock-crazy Scandinavia before the band had even signed a domestic record contract. Arriving stateside via indie Get Hip, Bamboo Kids is a strippeddown genius bomb of raw vocal sass, rusty razor chording, and “Oo-ooh”s that sound more like sneers than harmonies. “Continuous Go-Go” cuts sharply over meaningless cool gibberish; it sounds like those leather jacketed Japanese kids who transliterate punk solely for the love. “She Got Off” and “Suck the Life Out of Me” find the gristly heart of the earliest new wave, that energetic sound that cleaned up just enough to meet girls. It’s a regeneration that’s been rocked before, but cocksureness carries a long way, and from “Right On” and “Caught in New York City” to the rain-slicked gutter ballad “Good Boy,” Bamboo Kids prove they’re younger, louder and snottier from first to greasy last.
Johnny Loftus writes about music for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected].
