Ride Your Bike: Bad News From The Bar

The Indie Review
By Sean Duregger
February 27, 2008

Artist: Ride Your Bike
Album: Bad News From the Bar
Label: Deep Elm Records

Rating:

On rare occasions, an album sneaks up on you like a crazed ninja and knocks you over the head with crazy musical nunchucks. Ride Your Bike’s Bad News From the Bar is the musical ninja I speak of. I knew nothing at all going into reviewing this album. All I knew was a smidgen of a song I had heard online. By the time I was through with my first listen, I knew I had just listened to something special.

Ride Your Bike is a project headed up by Mike Getches, who penned an imaginary screenplay to provide the back drop for Bad News From the Bar. This method of writing takes the listener through the album in a natural and involving way. We come to know characters and get wrapped up a story that could play itself out on screen. Bad News From the Bar follows two childhood friends, Elliot and Lillian, as they grow apart during a time of war.

Once you realize that this album is actually the companion to a well thought out story, you really invest in the songs and lyrics. This is an album that warrants numerous re-visits, but each song can be enjoyed on it’s own merit. This is an album that flows from song to song exceptionally well, with numerous indie pop hooks and sing along choruses. I really like the diversity Deep Elm Records has been showing in 2007, and am looking forward to see what happens in 2008.

With Bad News From the Bar, Ride Your Bike have given us a complex and diverse album that goes down easy. It is an album that gets better with each listen and will be stuck in your CD player or iPod for weeks, if not months.

Stand Out Tracks:

“Sticks and Stones”

“This Car is Hot as Hell”

“Sense of Things”