Choo Choo La Rouge

I used to have a policy of only covering a band once (or at least splitting it between records, shows, and features), so as not to appear favoritist, or some high-falutin' moral crap-stance. But with this release, and a few others this month, I'm forced to bag that thinkin' forever. I'm urgently reminded that it's OKAY to have favorites, to WANNA spew long-winded odes of praise to complete strangers simply because it's the right thing to do. In fact, it's my JOB here. Last I checked, this affable, garage-lite trio used exceptional smarts, hooks and melody to make gourmet meals outta some low-key leftovers, and it sounded like a cool transitional phase. But rather than settling on a formula to strangle, this gentle-but-solid, still-finding-its-way thing IS their actual sound right now, and it works more beautifully than any pre-fab act you can name. One is reminded of a thousand songs here, yet unable to name one. It takes you places you've been while leading you to foggy unknowns, like they've lived your past, and know your penchant for fucking up the future. A strangely soothing, happy-sorta-sadness thing that's elusive but not vague, heartfelt but not precious, simple but not simple-minded, yet muscular enough to keep your ass moving. There hasn't been a situation yet where I've put this on and it didn't feel wonderful.

- Joe Coughlin - The Noise

Although Choo Choo La Rouge's debut is rightly pegged as "intelligent indie pop," thanks to the smart (though not horn-rimmed) lyrics and the grower hooks, this track [The Kind of Noise You Can't Turn Down] which ends the record packs a deeper whallop: where frontman Vincent Scorziello has the indie pop trait of rarely letting down his guard, on this song his voice gapes in drawn-out, melodic ache, pretty on the first listen and downright enthralling by the fourth. This recently shushed a crowd at the Middle East when they opened for the Wrens, and when one guy at the front let out a whoop, Scorziello took a second to thank him - but you could tell he was still feeling the song.

-Chris Dahlen - Stylus Magazine

Fun and witty pop rocks from this Boston-based group. Choo Choo La Rouge have their own good time sound, and that's certainly original in itself in this day and age of indie groups pooling together in as much generic clamor as the bands on the majors. Standouts include "Black Sheep", "I Get Lost", "Extinct Music", and "Sinkhole". Sometimes these guys sound like a rattletrap street corner group, and other times they rock tighter than most current bands I can think of. So yes, they can play it straight or serious, and that's what makes I'll Be Out All Night the captivating and charming album that it truly is. This one's definitely a keeper, and should certainly thrill those listeners out there with a thirst for the different without turning into the fringe. Good stuff.

- Jason Thompson - Pop Matters

When we last checked in with Boston-based Choo Choo La Rouge, the threesome was striding punk and alt-alt-c, cranking out sardonically twangy ballads about girls gone wrong and getting totally nuts with their paranoid punk rant "People Are Yelling". Now, a couple of years later, they're back with their first full-length, a very strong piece of work that builds on all the foundations they laid down -- Fall-ish post-punk, Whiskeytown-style twisted trad, soaring power pop and classic rock a la Damn the Torpedos Petty. What they add this time around is a more consistent, more sophisticated voice. I'm not talking about the singing, which is still somewhere between eccentrically distinctive and unpleasantly nasal, but the words, which are smart and interesting throughout. In "Sinkhole", the album's hardest-rocking track, singer/guitarist Vincent Scorziello observes, "Too many records and books with heavy ideas / made a broken home out of me." If you're saying "me too", as I was, you're going to enjoy the disc.

Highlights here include "Black Sheep", with its sugar-pop "ba ba ba da" vocals and black-humored phastamagories. "She's a Bomb" is shimmering, tense and sexual, its rhythmic guitar line indeed the "killer soundtrack of inevitability". "There's no will to begin with in me/ you try ignoring the sun / you try ignoring gravity," Scorziello explains, locked in obsessive heat. There's an odd line, "I could try to explain, but she's using my mouth," repeated, then a ripped-out guitar solo that sounds like the Edge on a home recorder's budget. "Sinkhole" is perhaps the disc's best song, yelped like a cowpunk anthem, the vocals layered on frantically pushed punk rhythms. You can hear echoes of Buddy Holly and the Fall and Richard Hell, but the sound is all its own, the lyrics self-aware and city-ironic. "Is this like a short story / or an autobiography / Is this a work of fiction or am I singing about me / I can tell you'd like to know / but I can't tell you what to believe."
I'll Be Out All Night closes with a slow, gorgeous, night-driving ballad, all pounding drums and reverbed eighth-note guitars and late-hour stream of consciousness lyrics. It's a song that flits with a dreamlike intensity from the ghost of Joey Ramone to the eventual death of the sun to a bus-ride home from the bars -- and like the rest of the album, it fits its title, "The Kind of Noise You Can't Turn Down", very well.

- Jennifer Kelly
- Splendid