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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Review: Prize Country - With Love


Prize Country - With Love
2009, Hex Records

Portland, Oregon post-punk rockers Prize Country deliver rough cut Rock N Roll with no pithy nuances on With Love; opening with From The Gutter, a brief, guitar-driven instrumental that sounds like the bridge of a song still in development. This deceptively comfortable opening leads into the aggressive talk/sing rock of Regular Nights. Prize Country sounds like a cross between Red Hot Chili Peppers and Staind here; throwing up a taught arrangement beneath a loose and roaming vocal line. It Was Just A Night Like Tonight features some of the strongest guitar work on the album, and the vocals are more of a cadence than a melody. The song itself is fairly bland given the genre, opting for safe rather than challenging.

Prize Country spends a few songs ambling about the bland waters they've fallen into before slamming into Bigger Picture with challenging guitar work worth sticking around for. It's an intriguing tune; very listenable although there liabilities in the vocal here. Cement is driven with solid guitar work. The song is a bit repetitive and could use a little more power (which it will probably get live), but is decent enough as is. With Love is something of a come down as a closing track, by far the weakest on the disc.

Prize Country presents as a rough and tumble Rock N Roll band, singing/talking somewhere between RHCP and The Beastie Boys, but the energy, while high, is too static along the way. At the end of the day I'd conclude that Prize Country is solid but quite limited in both their stylistic and vocal range. As long as you're fine with that as a fine it's a solid piece of work.

Rating: 3 Stars (Out of 5)

You can learn more about Prize Country at http://www.prizecountry.net/ or www.myspace.com/prizecountry. You can order With Love as either a CD or Download from Amazon.com.

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