Photo credit: Amanda Mills
The first album I ever truly loved as a kid was Chipmunk Punk, a fittingly ridiculous ’80s relic from Alvin & The Chipmunks. Despite its title and cover art, it wasn’t really punk, even by the standards of a novelty album by cartoon animals—there weren’t any Ramones songs or anything like that, as incredible as that would have been. But novelty aside, Chipmunk Punk captures a really weird, very particular window of rock music maybe better than any other album I’ve ever heard: the very early ’80s pre-MTV era, a time of mass genre confusion when classic rock, New Wave and skinny-tie power-pop all blurred together.
That sound was epitomized by bands like Cheap Trick, The Cars and The Knack—shit that was maybe never really all that cool but has never been uncool, either. And right now no band is tapping the spirit of that era more fruitfully than Platinum Boys, the economical Milwaukee quartet that’s gradually tidied up their AM radio sleaze rock into something a little lighter, more inclusive and period-specific, without losing the no-frills spirit that’s always been central to their sound.
The group’s latest EP “We Don’t Dance (Anymore)” only further testifies to how deceptively inventive this group is. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of touring bands working in more or less the same lane—nonchalant, shtick-free punk-but-not-too-punk rock bands that reliably draw at least several dozen people in any city they play and usually sell a lot of buttons—yet none are doing it with quite the same character as Platinum Boys, whose easygoing sound disguises some truly knockout songs. The title track sounds like the type of thing that 35 years ago could've earned a group a generous advance and some studio time with a name producer. Those days of are long over, of course, but that doesn't make it any less of a joy to hear. In 2018, this stuff sounds just as glorious coming out of the back room of dive bars as I imagine it would've coming out of arenas decades ago.
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You can stream the EP below, and catch the group at the Cactus Club on Friday, Jan. 26 for their European tour sendoff show, joined by three choice openers: Dusk, Zed Kenzo and Detenzione.
