• Home
  • About
  • Masthead & Contact Info
  • Advertise
  • News
    • That’s My Dump!
    • Cover Stories
    • Vote or Quit Bitchin’
  • Views
    • Bollardhead
    • Media Mutt
    • One Maniac’s Meat
    • Outta My Yard
    • Letters
    • Corrigan comics
    • Op-eds
    • Cover Story Views
    • Editorials
  • Interviews
  • Food & Booze
    • The Breakfast Serial
    • Fishing In Public
  • Reviews
    • CD Reviews
    • Books & Movies
    • Art
    • Live music reviews
  • Crossword!
  • Podcasts
  • Archives
    • Last Calls
    • 15 Pictures
    • Downtown, Maine
    • The Online Underground
    • The Happiest Hours
    • Newburn comics
    • Off the Eatin’ Path
    • Land of Forgotten Cocktails
    • Cheery Monologues
    • Queerbie
    • Short Films
    • Li’l Spencer’s Adventures
    • TOBY, Robot Satan
    • Tuesday Toons
Browse: Home / CD Reviews, Music / Midwestern Medicine

Midwestern Medicine

December 2, 2018

Midwestern Medicine
The Winking Badge
self-released 

“I want you to hold me / Like a big tube of toothpaste / And squeeze out everything I have to offer,” Brock Ginther sings, smack dab in the middle of his new band’s debut LP. It’s an apt visual. Because although The Winking Badge is a mere 27 minutes long, it’s stuffed – with syllables, moods, accents, tempo shifts, and every genre within a square mile of middle-of-the-road indie rock. “Urgent Opening” is just that, a seething Sex Pistols sea shanty that makes for an arresting track one. Ginther (a guitarist who also plays with Galen Richmond and others in Lemon Pitch), together with ex-Whale Oil bassist McCrae Hathaway and drummer Brian Saxton, then slams the brakes, hangs a hard left and takes off into hooky glam-rock territory with “Puppy Dreams.” The threesome eventually falls back to the speed limit on the croony ballad “Tomorrow’s Eyes,” then aims straight for the cornfield on the country-rock goofs “Sassahoma” and “Idiot Allies.” It’s all tied together by the chemistry of these musicians, who remain in sync through each of these free-wheeling shifts, and by Ginther’s pen, which produces lyrics as off-handedly clever as any songwriter ’round these parts. “Well the bad guys came and took away your Nintendo,” he drawls. It’s a little bit silly, and completely unforgettable.

— Joe Sweeney

Midwestern Medicine plays a CD release show at Port City Music Hall on Dec. 13.

Categories: CD Reviews, Music

« Sean Mencher Xander Nelson »

Departments

Enter your email to subscribe to our RSS feed:

Copyright 2008 The Bollard - all rights reserved