Robbers On High Street
Fine Lines
On Sale Now
For $4.98

Tomer Danan - Drums
Steven Mercado - Guitars
Jeremy Phillips - Bass
Ben Trokan – Everything Else

"A Night At Star Castle"

The New York indie rock scene continues to know no boundaries as Robbers On High Street come out of somewhere evoking a sound that is everywhere. The recent wave of rockers that continue these garage rock trends are Jet, Longwave, The Walkmen, The Stills, and of course, The Strokes. All of these bands make music that isn’t necessarily emotionally driven, but instead, manage to make you boogie and bang your head at the same time. This is the perfect kind of sound that is clearly made for the cigarette smoke ambiance of a black-lit club accompanied by imported beer and satiated speakers. If you’re not getting sick of this style of music, like me, then by all means, you owe it to yourself to hear a better example of this genre with their Fine Lines EP that is far too short and leaves you aching for a full-length release.

Straightforward in delivery and structure, the Robbers are fierce and instinctive without ever vacating their potent intuition for a good beat and a strapping melody. Clearly they are inspired by legends like The Kinks and at times they reveal the same abrupt vivacity is heard in every discharge. Slowly but surely, they want to tear you down, and bring you back to life with their pulsing guitar strums and unrefined drum tremors. The record hits its stride early with “A Night At Star Castle” which combines two-chord staccato guitar breaks with an implosion of harmony that drives the tune home. It all goes uphill from there until the last track feels like a repeat instead of a culmination.

“How It Falls Apart” fortunately does not live up to its title, and restrains a tuneful chorus that surprisingly suggests a new wave Beatles meshed with a Joy Division bass line. Then “Opal Ann” pulls a 180 and skillfully slows the pace down in a minor key that would even please die-hard fans of Wilco. The 6-track showcase concludes with “If You Let Me” which finds them following the garage rock formula to the T, which is only a slight downer after the detour of “Opal Ann” that seems to suggest they are capable of expanding their horizons even further by including more piano-driven material.

Robbers On High Street will no doubt garner a lot of success based on this short but stable EP. Here’s hoping that they decide not to bow down to typical indie rock conventions, and in its place, actually attempt to improve on their promise here with something that rocks both the heart and the body. The blueprints have been mapped out, and it’s time for them to start building the real thing. With the energy and talent on display here, it sounds like they could construct a solid foundation for their future, in their sleep if they had to.

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