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CD REVIEW:

SEALED WITH A KISS

The Eyeliners

To see The Eyeliners live is to become a fan for life…I found that out a couple of months ago, when the band played a small club here in Jacksonville, Florida.  It was a show I still haven’t stopped telling people about.

These three sisters from Albuquerque, New Mexico take to the stage with an energy almost too big to contain.  Bassist Lisa rattles the walls with her heavy, thunderous grooves, while guitarist Gel, whose style can only be described as acrobatic, bounces around from corner to corner like a supercharged ion particle.  And drummer Laura drives the sound with dexterity and speed, while at the same time, disarmingly offsetting the group’s fierce raucousness with her sweet vocal lines.

Of course, none of this would mean anything without the songs, and Sealed With A Kiss, the band’s newest offering from Lookout! Records, is twelve dynamic rounds of rock anthems played at breakneck speeds.  It’s a roller coaster ride with no lulls, and no queasy feeling afterwards…just a desire to get right back on and experience it again.

Everything about The Eyeliners can be defined as complimentary contradictions…for starters, to look at the back cover of the CD and gaze upon their friendly smiles would be never to guess that they could thrash their instruments the way they do.  The sound of the album from beginning to end is hard, fast, and unapologetically heavy, yet the ferocity of the music is tamed by an infectious and undeniable sense of melody.  Pinpointing the band’s influences is a guessing game of pick-up sticks…you might hear a bit of everything from 50s girl group harmonies to 60s free-spiritedness in the chord progressions, from 70s punk sensibilities to late 80s metal swagger.  All of these go into The Eyeliners machine and come out on the other end as something fresh, new and exciting…rock and roll for the new millennium.

It’s raw, yet smooth, unpolished, yet perfectly presented…it rings out with a new truth:  punkers, who once built records with walls of noise, are learning how to master their instruments.  And if a wider audience than normal ends up liking the music as a result?  Well, so be it.

There’s not a weak spot on the CD, but everybody has to have a favorite track, so after much deliberation, I settled on “I Could Never Hate You”.  That one song is perfectly indicative of everything that’s great about this band.  It’s hard, fast and melodic, with a lyric that could make anyone smile.  It’s also a tune that evidences the band’s musical abilities and tightness and their confidence as songwriters.  A close second might be “I’d Do It All Over Again”, which will have the “oh, uh oh” bridge going through your head for the rest of the day.

In fact, Sealed With A Kiss is the perfect antidote for people like me who tend to get inexplicable and God-awful songs stuck in their brains for days at a time…since picking it up, I always make sure it’s the first thing I listen to in the morning, and at least I spend the rest of the day with good songs trapped in my skull.

Everyone tells me rock and roll is coming back in a big way, and I like to believe it’s true.  If it is, I firmly expect these young women’s star to go hurtling through the stratosphere and leave an indelible light in the sky.  The proof is in the proverbial pudding…Sealed With A Kiss is by far the best rock record of the year, if not the last several.

For more information on The Eyeliners, or to contact the band, or to order your own copy of Sealed With A Kiss, visit their website!