Streetwaves
The pleasure to end all pleasures
I Made This
It's a shame that Streetwaves couldn't keep up the emotional velocity set out in the powerful opener "Whatever is available will be your next step", by far the best track on the entire record. But the energy is high throughout and I hope that my opening line does not color "The pleasure to end all pleasures" too darkly; while it has it's flaws, it's a fun, vigorous garage-indie-rock album. The bar is merely set very high by the opening track, and it remains a bar that the album doesn't approach again. The gritty Nine Black Alps and The Hives influenced mode, while strongly written and executed, occasionally suffers from a lack of direction and songs that could easily have been shortened by at least a minute. Complaints aside, there are a number of excellent high points. "Choking in the boysroom" is one the better dark indie songs I've heard in a while, its shorter length and lower-fi production benefiting the composition. The Pavement-like "Holy stranger" shows that Streetwaves are just as competent with slower tempos and clocks in as my second favorite song on the album. While far from faultless, "The pleasure to end all pleasures" is a dirty garage rock record, and in this vein it works – we already have enough finely tuned, flawlessly polished, and forgettable acts like The Strokes out there.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson
