Riddlin’ Kids
Hurry Up and Wait (Aware/Columbia) Like Dynamite Hack before them, Austin’s Riddlin’ Kids have found considerable success on the Austin airwaves with a sound more mainstream than the slovenly strain of rock that pundits consider true “local” music. The Kids themselves are probably too busy to care, plying that steel-bellied pop/punk that, even three years after Blink-182’s Enema of the State set the genre’s high-water mark, still has adolescent Americans pogoing out of their oversized pants. Thus, the Kids’ major-label debut comes barreling out of the chute and kicks up quite a dust cloud before ultimately tripping over its own tongue. It sounds great, as alt-radio whiz Paul Ebersold (3 Doors Down, Sister Hazel) massages every guitar sunburst, pulse-pounding bassline, and depth charge of drums until they’re practically three-dimensional. The lyrics, however, lay a big round egg. It’s the same old scenario where the singer spends the duration of the album alternately pining for and railing at one lost love or another, a bipolarity otherwise known as the “dude, breakups suck” syndrome. No one’s saying they don’t, but a band with the presence of mind to cover R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” ought to know when they’re being vapid. The PG-13 refrain of local hit “Blind” is certain to have mosh-pitters yelling “leave that bitch tonight!” while “Wasted Away” is an evocative, Social Distortion-like character study of small-town frustrations, but lyrically, the other songs wouldn’t survive an audition for prom band on the WB’s Smallville. Actually, several songs (“I Feel Fine,” “Can’t Think”) are more than bouncy enough to wind up on some future teen-flick soundtrack, so if Hurry Up and Wait doesn’t exactly make the Kids local heroes, the royalty checks ought to take away some of the sting. They can always write their next batch of songs about hanging out at the Back Room — songs, of course, no self-respecting ClearChannel station would let within 200 feet of the control room.
This article appears in August 2 • 2002.