Holy Happy Hour

Stockholm Syndrome's debut album flashed a brand of rootsy heartland rock that managed to sound wide-ranging and ordinary at the same time. Certainly you can hear a bunch of different styles morphing together in varying shapes -- blues, funk, hard rock, echoes of singer/songwriters like Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Graham Parker, and Bob Seger, even some touches of reggae and Caribbean steel band music. It somehow sounds more like a very tight bar band than anything else, though, albeit a bar band reaching for something more meaningful than usual bar band fare. There's a rather grim and determined mindset to the songs and vocals, like an earnest mid-'70s second-tier Midwest rock band suddenly transplanted to the horror of the early 21st century that doesn't like what it sees. It's heartfelt, but far more journeyman than outstanding. "American Fork," in fact, gets a little ham-fisted in its survey of the confused outlook of the United States as it headed into the 2004 elections. But a band deserves some praise for the courage to almost certainly forsake airplay for that track, given lines like "hard to get a handle on your evolution with your Bible up your ass and your face in the stove." ~ Richie Unterberger|