Somewhere between old-school punk’s swagger and attitude and New Wave’s spikey and frantic agitation, you find Mark Vennis & Different Place’s latest fab and groovy waxing, “Small Town Vampire.” For those of you not old enough to remember those days, this latest single sounds like the best of both worlds: a song that packs a punky punch but has also absorbed enough pop awareness, for want of a better term, to make it infectious and accessible—the perfect blend of muscle and melody, groove and grit.
Of course, I’m not saying that Mark and the gang are merely sitting on their laurels or plundering past glories, but everything sounds like something. So, if you will make music that reminds me of the first purchases of my formative record collection, which fine with, I am going to say what I see…I mean hear. I’m also okay with the fact that the narrative nature and abrasive delivery reminds me slightly of The Boomtown Rats, another band who bridged those two worlds brilliantly.
Short, sharp, and shockingly good, “Small Town Vampire” is the sound of the seeds of punk still finding fertile soil in the modern era. Forget the lumpy nostalgia-fest that most punk bands seem to be today, content to wallow in old attitudes, long-forgotten political reference points, and that whole “nothing’s as good as it used to be” schtick. No, this is the real deal, this is the sound of those punk seeds blossoming in the modern age and finding an audience of both new discerning acolytes and veterans of the punk wars alike.
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