Immune to Gravity

Album Review

Moth's attempt at a second act, at least in modern rock terms, is about what one would expect from a band with Weezer connections and friends in sympathetic places following its being dropped from Virgin. If anything Brad Stenz's overtly '70s punk rock dude vocals — a bit like Jonathan Richman interpreting Joey Ramone, with a bit of a devolved Bowie kicking around — is probably the group's strongest asset, set against the hordes who think that singing was invented by Billie Joe Armstrong. The production showcases it well and everything on the album sounds agreeably loud and punchy and so forth. The downside of this release, though, is that it's so aggressively pleasant within its self-imposed boundaries that that's about it — if choppy riffs and some strutting attitude is going to do it for a listener, then pretty much said listener isn't going to mind, but there's just not that much more to say about Immune to Gravity. Sure, there are fun moments to notice — the hyperspeed vocal break on "Revolution," the rather Smashing Pumpkins-like lead riff on "Shock City." There's even a ballad five songs in, and "Perfect" probably succeeds best of all the tunes because the drums are jettisoned, resulting in a song that honestly sounds different from everything else around it. Yet somewhere amid all the lyrical clichés-meant-as-truth-but-still-clichés — not to mention a lesbian-voyeur fantasy that's meant to be humorous but feels like a SuicideGirls fanfic — Moth succeeds in being perfectly obvious, the type of music to make someone think, "Right, they still do that, don't they." They may have their comeback effort but at best it provokes a gentle shrug. Give 'em credit, though — at 11 songs in 32 minutes, at least they don't give into CD bloat.