Pushing Red Buttons
The Butterfly Net
Blockchord Records

I'm not particularly fond of American standard rock. Especially not the kind designed to be played live at big arenas. Quite a lot of the songs on The Butterfly Net fall into these categories. So, I'm probably not the right person to review this album. But, there are some doses of Todd Rundgren kind of stuff on several tracks, a few sequences seem influenced by Zappa to some extent. There are even traces of Brian Wilson ("Too Late") and Steely Dan (especially "Heavy Hand") so it can't be all that bad.

The highlight, by far, is the 9 minutes long title track. It starts in the same vein as most of the other songs. After a while it is interrupted by a nice string quartet (or trio?) for a minute, then continues as a good time old-fashioned pop song that evolves into a guitar and keyboard solo with Zappaesque flavour before it all ends somewhere near the street where it started. A delightful surprise compared to the more traditional majority of songs. "My Parting Shot" is also a little surprising; a folk or singer-songwriter song, melancholic and pleasant. A little gem.

Those two latter tracks are quite enough for me. If you're into American rock of the last 35 years, however, the entire album might be just the right thing for you. Check out the Pushing Red Buttons' Myspace page for futher investigation.

Copyright © 2009 JP