Umvd Labels
2006
Who's Gonna Take Us Alive?
About This Album
It's what the world's been waiting for: the love child of Hanoi Rocks and the Strokes, wearing Interpol haircuts. That's the Bangkok Five in a nutshell -- they're a Hollywood sleazoid interpretation of the new garage and dance-punk that came out of NYC during the first half of the 2000s. And since L.A. sleaze pretty much cancels out any other element in a band, the Bangkok Five on their debut album Who's Gonna Take Us Alive? are much harder and dirtier than their East Coast counterparts, which also makes them sound much more desperate and much less cool (of course, it's hard to imagine that a band comprised of dudes called Frost, Holcomb KS, Sweeney, Coatez, and Blanco could not be cool). But that doesn't mean that the B5 don't rock, because they do: there's an undercurrent of genuine reckless energy fueling the 11 songs (and two interludes) that comprise Who's Gonna Take Us Alive?, and they cough up some good riffs that are halfway between GNR's careening blooze rock and the Strokes' tightly-wound guitars. Try as he may, vocalist Frost doesn't come close to capturing the essence of Julian Casablancas' jaded, laconic delivery, no matter how he mimics the phrasing or the melodies, but that's for the best: songs that are teeming with references to MySpace, <a href="Craig's List">Craig's List}, The Teaches of Peaches, and girls' boxers really shouldn't sound cool, hip, or detached; they should sound grimy and decadent, which they nearly do.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,5,7 and 9)

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