Small Brown Bike is touring with Leatherface and Hot Water Music now, and that line-up sounds just about right because Small Brown Bike is definitely in the same vein, musically. There's a sense of racing towards the edge of chaos without going off. The sound is very full, and everyone seems to be doing something interesting. The bass guitar is more prevalent in this album than in most rock'n'roll records, but not in a wanking way. Ben Reed has a way of playing bass like it's a drum, filling in spaces between beats. It's very cool and it matches well with the rest of the songs, which all rock. Lyrically, it comes across as the poetry of a melancholy guy in his twenties, which I don't really dig, but when you don't read the lyric sheet, you catch only snippets of pretty poetic lines, and I do dig that. No Idea found a real gem in this band. I'm looking forward to catching them live when they come around.
–sean (No Idea, PO Box 14636, Gainesville, FL 32604)