The Stateside Menace
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Music
Press
For those that are fans of British rockers The Smiths and The Clash and U.S. rockers The Replacements, look no further than your local music scene to get your power-pop rock fix from Nashville’s The Stateside Menace.
The Stateside Menace is a special blend of straight-ahead stomp-out-loud rock. Their debut album, Desperate Times, fuses their love of The Clash and The Replacements with modern depictions of life in post-crash America. And to show their love for Moz and the Smiths, there’s an rockin’ cover of “Shoplifters of the World, Unite”.
While the official release date is May 10, you can currently listen to the entire album for FREE here! The album will be a digital-only release and will be available through Bandcamp as well as iTunes, Amazon, etc.
More importantly, if you dig these guys (or are just a generous soul!), please help them tour the U.K.! They have a KickStarter project running to help get them overseas to tour with their friends the Kosmo Kings. This would be an amazing experience for them, and you get some super awesome prizes for donating! Check their KickStarter site for more information!
And don’t forget to go like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter today!! - Katherine Lever
A lot of people will tell you “punk” is an attitude, not a genre. I’d agree with them, seeing as the punk attitude has influenced a wide array of artists from Daft Punk to Green Day. From it’s golden years in Britain, we continue to see punk excite and energize artists and audiences alike, instilling a sense of reckless abandon in everything we do. Take all of those elements and put a Nashville spin on it, and you’ve got The Stateside Menace. Their latest record, “Desperate Times,” is a refreshing dose of fun rock ‘n’ roll that will easily nestle into anyone’s musical taste.
Think of everything you love about recordings by The Clash, The Smiths, The Replacements, and other British punk rock icons and you’ll find it within “Desperate Times.” Punchy drums, heavy guitars, and brilliantly delivered lyrics serve as the album’s strong points, especially on songs like “Original Rock & Roll,” and “Dance Rock Sellout.” “The first thing you should know is I’m a criminal/Good people aren’t allowed to be like me,” sings vocalist Brandon de la Cruz during the first verse of “Dance Rock Sellout.” That’s quite an introduction, but its gusto keeps you listening to the rest of Brandon’s tale of distress. By the very next track, we’re quickly brought back to fist pumping, high octane goodness. “Sugarshaker,” a catchy rocker practically begging for crowd singalongs, demonstrates what the band does best. I gaurantee you’ll be banging your head ten seconds into this track.
The moments of the album I truly love are where we find The Stateside Menace experimenting with different textures, such as album opener “Amber’s Revenge,” and penultimate track “Amber.” Heavily reverberated feedback, chorused acoustic guitars, and dark vocals provide an excellent contrast to the hard hitting songs in between. For the closing track, “Valentines Day,” we witness the first somber song on the whole album, a short-but-sweet ballad leaning on the singer/songwriter style that Nashville does so well.
You can stream the entire album now on the band’s website, but it’s slated for release on May 10th. However, if you want an advanced copy, or even your very own house show starring the band, you can pledge donations to the band’s Kickstarter project while also helping them get to England and perform. Keep an eye out for upcoming shows, you won’t want to miss them! - Music City Interactive
I do enjoy this. It's The Stateside Menace. This is the track "Dance Rock Sellout" from their album Desperate Times. I feel an affinity for anything that equates love with sharp things. I know, I'm odd.
You can snag the entire album (and stream it and check out more) at their Bandcamp page. - NeedCoffee.com
Discography
Desperate Times (2011)
Photos
Bio
Desperate Times, the debut album from The Stateside Menace, is brimming with a dark energy that threatens to overwhelm the listener - the result of countless hours in the studio trying to translate the ferocity of their live show onto tape. "What came across to me while we were recording was the desperation in the songs," says Brandon. "These were songs I had written over the course of a few years and I was trying to figure out what they all had in common - and it was an intense longing, everything from a simple longing for action in 'Sugarshaker' to really complex questions of love in 'Rachel, Pt. 1' and 'Audrey Hepburn'. So we decided to call the album Desperate Times."
The music recalls the familiar desperation of the late seventies, the desperation of The Clash and My Aim Is True and Marquee Moon and Warren Zevon. But most of all, Desperate Times invokes comparisons to the immediate heirs to the post-punk throne - The Replacements. "We tried to get it to where you can hear what we're feeling in every note, where every second of sound has all of our passion and desire in it," Brandon says. "It was important to us not to polish it too much or dilute the power of this record - just to let the songs and the sounds speak for themselves."
"Because no one makes desperate music anymore."
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