Spitting Nickels

...5 The Hard Way is a fine example of Motor City blues rock. And Jim Diamond has done an excellent job from behind the mixing desk, while the musicianship of Sights and Shotgun Wedding man Eddie Baranek (taking drumming duties here), bassist John Bissa, lead guitarist Chris Brosky, vocalist Dennis Miriani and, of course, Furtaw is exquisite. The songs are pretty damn good too. As the title suggests, there are only five here, but each one is a finely-crafted slice of barroom boogie. "Give & Take" is a fittingly raucous way to open the record, with Miriani crooning over a filthy garage rock riff. "The Bitch of It All" features a strong ’60s vibe in a Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels vein, with its anthemic chorus and some retro, jangly guitar work. Best of all is the amusingly titled "You’re the Bomb, Soccer Mom." The band manages to make the wonderfully ludicrous title fit into a rather poignant tune without it sounding at all silly. - Metro Times

Of their live shows, Spitting Nickels say "You might even forget about your day job for a bit," and the band (Dennis Miriani, Chris Brosky, John Bissa and local rock n' roll fixture Eddie Baranek) take the working man angle on their new EP 5 The Hard Way.

The band take on topics of blue-collar Americana, such as working for the man ("Give & Take"), cheap drinks ("4 The Hard Way"), being in a bar band ("The Bitch Of It All") and soccer moms ("You're The Bomb, Soccer Mom"). The latter is a country-tinged diddy which almost could've been a Sarah Palin campaign song – maybe if not for the line about "$40 nails carving up my back". Even still, 5 The Hard Way is a solid EP of Ghetto Recorders-produced, vintage -sounding, Beatles-esque rock n' roll. - Motor City Rocks

Soul and grit and that boot-stomping bar band ethos, but delivered so…passionately. Yeah, with passion – that’s the word I kept coming back to – which left me no other choice but to quote the aptly put bio entry on Detroit quartet Spitting Nickels’ homepage: “To Spit Nickels is, at least by one person's definition, to do something very difficult, but with passion and purpose.” Dig it.

Spitting Nickels' projection as a working-class or blue-collar band is made solidly evident by their fat-cat indicting opener Give & Take – think Harrison’s Taxman as transposed upon the oil stained pavement of an abandoned factory parking lot on an overcast day in Detroit – and these scuffed denim Stroh’s swishing crusaders are gonna lay down everything that’s been going wrong, in their eyes, these past few years.

These riffs come in quick and steady, like punches to the head…while singer Dennis Miriani’s soulful howl trades off expressive waves with Chris Brosky’s guitar – "...you still work, but then they take it away…times they are tough, I can’t get a break..."

Get a rhythm and strum that guitar with reckless exertion balanced by soulful conviction – that’s all you need,...dig the waving grooves of "4 The Hard Way" that bottle neck into splendid crunchy guitar solos. "The Bitch of it All" breaks out again with these characteristic tight guitar jolts that ride over Brosky and bassist John Bissa’s intertwining sunshine guitar tones and smooth driving bass lines while drummer Eddie Baranek, who every where else is hitting the skins as lethally as a ninja but as rousing as a jackknifed-truck, brings a more subtle driving pop-rhythm on this one while he joins Miriani on back-up vocals for the chorus. Textbook smoky blues-guitar-guts spills all over the opening of "You’re The Bomb, Soccer Mom," which slides nicely into an alt-country feeling swinger, with Miriani’s gruff twang singing a tongue-in-cheek love song to a distinctly American cliché; that great indie-shred-mixed-with-blues-beauty guitar styling also shines on this one…This all gets wrapped up with the steady beat and ravenous guitar rip opening of “Work it Out” that ebbs and flows into the EP’s most intricately structured entry (dig the organ coming in, and that guitar break-down at the halfway part) with flowing crescendos and Baranek providing his sweet refrain over the chorus. - Deep Cutz