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Screw the mainstream if you really want to get your rocks off you have to go to the underground. That's just what we plan to do with this series, take some of the best emerging bands that are out blowing away hardcore fans on the underground music scene. 

Pushing Red Buttons - Foreign Film or Tango Dance
Label: The Orchard
Rating: 
 

Tracks: 1. Tripping Over A Four Leaf Clover  2. Illusion Town  3. The Man Behind  4. Yoyo  5. Girls Gone Stupid  6. I''ll Tell  7. The Right Side  8. All Of This and More  9. Tad  10. M.A.W.  11. Love Jihad  12. Something Left For Me

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I wasn’t sure what to make of this CD at first.  The cover photo features a picture of some man’s very rotund rear end clad in leather shorts.  To be honest, it ain’t pretty.  Don’t let the packaging fool you though.  This is a good rock CD with a lot of 70s influences.  Like Fu Manchu, Pushing Red Buttons is a bit of an anomaly.  Both bands sound like they have been frozen in 1974.  Pushing Red Buttons, however, are more arty and less sludgy than Fu Manchu.

The CD opens with “Tripping Over a Four Leaf Clover.”  This song is packed with fat guitar riffs and keyboards that would not be out of place on a Deep Purple album.  “I’ll Tell” sounds heavily influenced by Queen.

The highlight of this album for me is “Girls Gone Stupid.”  This song is a tremendous commentary on the “Girls Gone Wild” videos.  The singer speaks of girls who are ready to go as soon as the cameras turn on.  He goes on to say that now the playing field is leveled for all the “stupid boys” because now they have stupid girls to hook up with.  At the end of the song, the singer tells of a man who is watching TV and sees his oldest daughter on a “Girls Gone Wild” commercial.   It is a pretty funny, insightful song.

Allow me to give a bit of advice.  Read the lyrics when you listen to this album.  Lyrically, there are some similarities to Clutch, particularly on “Illusion Town.”  “It’s human nature to pretend / we have the Devil for our friend / and if from apes we did descend with Newton’s Apple upon our heads / William Tell takes aim again…”  That’s not what you get from your ordinary rock band.  The rest of the album contains lyrics that are intellectual and sometimes political.  Pushing Red Buttons include a lot of social commentary on this album without being preachy.  It may make you laugh.  It may make you think.  We could all use a little music like that.
 
This is a successful album because Pushing Red Buttons show a lot of range.  There is the 70s rock sound that you will hear throughout the album.  They also include some funk (“The Right Side”) some late Beatles sound (“All of This and More”), avant-garde jazz-rock (“Tad”), and new wave (“Love Jihad”).  They pack a lot of stuff into forty-two minutes.  The one shortfall of this album is minor but it’s there.  The cadence of the lyrics is pretty similar in a lot of the songs.  But that’s the only place I can say that the album falls short.  If you love 70s rock and playing air guitar, this is an album you should have.
 

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