Proto-punk greasers Mickey get the Led out on their debut release Rock N Roll Dreamer. Eschewing contemporary trends from chillwave to indietronica, the Chicago-based band winds back the clock to a time when the electric guitar could do no wrong. The lead guitar-cum-rhythm guitar combo is cranked up to the maximum wattage for billboard style refrains and hot licks solos careening over feel-good chord progressions. To top it all off, dedicated lead vocalist Mac Blackout reels off bubblegum-and-brewski punk vignettes with a sense of theater that lends the album a narrative heft on par with other conceptually ambitious punk albums, from Green Day’s American Idiot or Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life. But where Green Day and Fucked Up overreached with grandiose story arcs, Mickey holds back with more modest restraint. Rock N Roll Dreamer, like a dream itself, presents itself as a non-linear narrative, a patchwork of leather-backed testosterone stitched together with aching strands of lust and love.
Flashback to a time when getting married and having kids right out of high school wasn’t a choice to shake your head at – it’s what everyone did. College was for rich kids; the rest of us got jobs at the local plant, moved out of the house, and spent our paychecks at the neighborhood rock ‘n’ roll joint on the lookout for weekend tail. Mickey captures the electricity of young adulthood, parsed into all its manic stages. "Kids Crazy In Love" tracks the trials of a runaway from a home, in love and out of luck. "Bright Lights" could be the second act follow-up: a kid on the loose in the big city, shedding the moral claustrophobia of the small town and assuming a larger-than-life persona to match his new surroundings. It’s the fictionalized story that the Mickey gang is living out in real life Chicago, with names like Mac Blackout (vocals), Mick Swagger (lead guitar), and Dirty D (rhythm guitar) that would smack of satire if the delivery wasn’t so spot-on sincere.
Among other accomplishments, Mickey salvages from rock ‘n’ roll history the loud & fast love song. Passionate odes to desire have been the constant companion of pop music. But, somewhere around the emergence of punk, we forgot that love songs needn’t be sappy or sugar-strewn. Love songs can be as fiery as the recurrent burning sensation in a sailor’s crotch. Punkers like the Sex Pistols steered a generation towards a general nihilism on the subject of love – and rockers like Billy Idol commercialized the (lack of) sentiment, deriding the innocence of passion with a snarling lip. Love was naïve; love was for suckers; love was a delusion sponsored the rush of hormones and projected narcissism; love was a farcical, honey-scented sponge scrubbed over the backsides of Establishment squares and a fat, aging, pill-popping Elvis. Songs like "She’s So Crazy" and "My Lady" fire up the love lamp without sacrificing punch: big honkin’ gas-guzzlin’ starry-eyed tunes dedicated to the fairer sex.
Throwback rock ‘n’ roll is always tricky business – the post modern ‘knowing nod’ is even trickier. Mickey keeps the focus straight by concentrating on the basics: girls, girls, girls, freedom, girls. The strains of ‘70s guitar sweat, the burning love storyboards, the licks, the glam, the theater, tie up nicely into an album that grows with each listen until the drama is as outsized as a strutting male ego on a Saturday night – you wouldn’t want Mickey any other way.
MP3 Stream: "Scream With Me"
