Forgive me for this, but real quick we need to jump back in the pool with Chris Holmes, then lead guitarist for heavy metal gods W.A.S.P., as he conducts one of the more harrowing (and rock n roll) interviews in film history. Say hello to the drunkest man who ever lived, and yes, harrowing as this infamous clip from Penelope Spheeriss 1988 L.A. music documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years might be, this is ultimately a tale of survival, for the man and, even more improbably, for the rock n roll ethos that tried to kill him.

Anyway, yikes. Im a full-blown alcoholic, Holmes concedes, slurring cordially. He estimates that he drinks five pints of vodka a day, although: Five quarts? Pints? Who cares? Yeah, Im a happy camper. Hah-hah! He blames, or rather credits, rock n roll for this: If you can tour one year, itll take four years off your life. There is a Santa glass in the cupholder of his pool chair; his mother is sitting poolside, terrified and resigned and making the most viscerally upsetting face in 80s cinema, nonLarge Marge category.

Do you think you might be covering up some pain? Holmess interviewer wonders, and he responds by cracking open a vodka bottle and pouring half of it in his mouth, and half of the rest in the general vicinity of his face. I dont dig being the person I am, he concludes, struggling to elaborate. I just dont like it. Being who I am, its just likehere, watch. And then he rolls into the pool. Cut back to his mother, still making The Face.

I mention this because a gentleman named Ryan Hater, who plays keyboards in the young Louisville, Kentucky, rock band White Reaper, evidently found it quite inspiring. Whats his name in the pool with the vodka, and his mom is there, and hes just talking about how he wants to be dead? Hater mused during a July interview with Michael Tedder for Stereogum. That made me want to be a musician. The urge to rock n roll, in 2019 as in 1988 as in 1967, is a fundamentally self-destructive impulse. A roaring bonfire fueled by the bodies of knuckleheads, warming the bodies of other knuckleheads. A healthy death drive is a necessary component of keeping this music alive.

White Reaper, to be clear, sound very little like W.A.S.P.: The quintet instead radiates a vulnerable sort of power-pop joy, all 70s-muscle-T dual-guitar leads and righteous solos and hooks with the searing ardor of molten lava and the sticky-sweet naivete of cotton candy. The affable goofiness that first made Weezer famous, the shrewd and ebullient laser precision that makes the New Pornographers the best power-pop band of their generation, the righteous six-string-as-six-shooter audacity of fellow young rockers Sheer Mag. Its arena-rock cosplay, sure, but every ambitious rock band is basically doing arena-rock cosplay until they actually, yknow, tour arenas. Think of White Reaper as Judas Priest disciples who steadfastly obey the law. These fellas dont sound too drunk, either. But youll recognize their jovial-hedonist vibe immediately.

It is ideal, in this day and age, to approach this style of Zippo-flicking guitar music with, if not irony, then at least some measure of cornball self-awareness: White Reapers 2015 full-length debut was called White Reaper Does It Again, which is the second-funniest album title in their brief catalog, after 2017s The Worlds Best American Band. Rally up and dress to kill / Lace your boots and crush your pills, the title tracks chorus begins, amid fake crowd noise that cements the mass-romantic Cheap Trick vibe. Run around and tell the gang / Polish up your dusty fangs. Its an electrifying feeling, even if theyre the sort of cuddly band Mom can bring home to you.

On Friday, White Reaper released their third and best LP, You Deserve Love. I have had Might Be Rightthe carefree bounce of the bass line, the prehistoric power-chord roar of the chorus, the thwarted lust of the lyrics, the dual-guitar riff with the richness and depth of a particularly well-thought-out Dungeons & Dragons campaignstuck in my head for, like, three weeks. Im a happy camper.

You cant talk about songs like this in 2019 without agonizing over the relative absence of songs like this in 2019. The raw, guitar-rock sound is reallyI dont want to say its done, but ... So equivocated Mike Kaplan, program director of New York Citys ALT 92.3, quoted in Joe Coscarellis recent New York Times piece about Mikes job running an alternative-rock station. Even this genres professional champions cant be much bothered to champion it anymore. Its present, but its morphed and mixed with other instrumentation, Kaplan added. Does anyone really go to Guitar Center anymore and pick up the guitar?

Thanks for your insight, Mike. I first heard Might Be Right on my own hometown alt-rock station, Columbus, Ohios beloved independent institution CD102.5, which, like the NYC alt-rock station, will only mess with Lana Del Rey if shes covering Sublime, and unlike the NYC alt-rock station will give Billie Eilish a shot, and like any alt-rock station anywhere leans as much toward Passion Pitstyle synth-pop as anything guitar-oriented. I love it. And Im also relieved that White Reapers album title wasnt The Worlds Last American Band.

It is tempting to process the relentless screwball joy of You Deserve Lovethe righteous airbrushed-van gallop of Raw, the bright New Wave strut of 1Fentirely through nostalgia for the alt-rock 1990s nostalgia for the sleaze-rock 1970s. But the joy is in living vicariously through the 20-something White Reaper dudes themselves. This is all new to them, and thats palpable even if this is all old hat to you. How come what you want and what you get / Always seem to be / Two different things? singer-guitarist Tony Esposito sings on Real Long Time, and this is not the most profound and groundbreaking lyrical observation someone will make in 2019. But there is profundity in looking on as the zillionth guitar-rocker in the zillionth excellent guitar-rock band figures this stuff out for himself.

Chris Holmes, by the way, is still alive, and 20-plus-years sober, and roughly 124 years old in touring years, and a good enough sport that in 2017 he did another pool interview that mostly concerned his wonderment at having escaped the downward spiral implied by his first pool interview. Why do I not drink anymore? After six DUIs, they throw you in jail, he explained, cordial as ever. And its really hard to drink in jail.

That observation, also, is more profound than it might first appear. Holmess continued existence is as stirring a testament to rock n roll defiance as anything he said or did or drank in his, uh, prime. White Reaper are not exactly self-annihilating wildmen, on paper or on record. But the desire is there, and thats reassuringly defiant, too.

See the article here:
The Rock n Roll Dreams of White Reaper - The Ringer