I gotta be honest. After hearing a track off the Dangerloves’ myspace page, I was not too thrilled to have just ordered a handful of copies of this new 7” for the shop. It was the usual key words that caught my eye and pulled me in – powerpop, members of Bayonettes/Career Suicide, summer soundtrack, Fashionable Idiots, etc. I was sweatin’ it a little bit.

Man. Then the package showed up, I opened it and stocked the record. A couple days went by and I realized I had forgotten to listen to it. Last night I threw the damn thing on and it floored me. What the hell did I listen to before?? I forget the rule of myspace posted music, you always have to assume the 99% quality/goodness loss. Now I was faced with the opposite problem, I hadn’t ordered enough!!

This is an awesome departure from Fashionable Idiots’ normal hardcore and heavy punk pop sound. I really like how the label is not afraid to expand and build on itself with slightly different sounds. It all rests in the same dark punk/basement pop family, but they keep away from being pigeon-holed into any specific subgenre.

Anyway, yes, the Dangerloves do contain members of Career Suicide and the Bayonettes. However, the sound is wedged way deep into the realm of 50s/60s girl-group worship and late 70s powerpop. This is summer soundtrack music, they’re right, but the Lipsmart 7” comes as the summer is winding down to perfectly capture that fleeting feeling. It stirs up that feeling of nostalgia that you get as you know you’ll be heading back to middle school soon. Ah, the crushes. The vocal melodies and clubbed drum beats are perfect. The background vocals (mainly ooooooohs and wooooooohs) slide across the background seamlessly filling in the holes. I’d flip it over for the third time in a row, but I think that customer is wondering what the hell I’m doing.

Yeah, whatever. But with this thing by my side I’m ready for summer to just keep rolling on.
Can ya bring me over a beer?
Why is it only two tracks??