The first song on the Ramones-idolizing, Spider-Man-obsessed Kentucky trio White Reaper's self-titled EP is called "Cool"; the second, "Funn". Brothers Nick and Sam Wilkerson and frontman Tony Esposito do not appear to have any particular designs on world domination; for now, they're more interested in catching the eye of that insomniac gal across the room. Esposito and the Wilkerson boys won the favor of their native Louisville with their spring-loaded live shows, which they've more than ably translated to wax on this six-song EP. They're a young band, and like most young bands, they've still got a couple kinks left to be worked out. But, for now, their youthful exuberance—and a half-dozen blistering hooks—are suiting them just fine.
Opener "Cool" lights the fuse, then quickly explodes; within five seconds, they are off and running. Atop a tight-as-anything smear of fuzzbox guitar and Nick Wilkerson's 90 MPH rhythms, Esposito stars pitching woo. "Oh-whoa, she's so cool," he sings in that classic American faux-Brit accent: a little bratty, and a whole lot smitten. And that, more or less, is White Reaper: revved-up, romantically inclined, hook-heavy punkers with a keen sense of their strengths and the good sense not to overextend themselves. "Should we settle down?" Esposito wonders halfway through "Funn," then quickly provides his own answer: "Oh, no."
A Chuck Berry-inspired solo here and a touch of moddish organ there add a splash of color to the proceedings. But the appeal of White Reaper's music is mostly pretty black-and-white: these are catchy, undemanding songs, played beyond an inch of their lives. Esposito's quite the little howler; hard to say just how he'd fare with a ballad—the breathless White Reaper EP never slows down long enough to give him the chance—but when he opens wide, that wail of his is more than enough. Sam Wilkerson's bass gets a bit lost in the melee, but brother Nick's just about all the rhythm section anyone could need. Together, they blast through White Reaper's 16 minutes like sprinters looking to shave seconds off their time.
Is White Reaper's music formulaic? No question—but, when the energy's right and hooks are there, their formula works, and it's a perennial favorite of the drunk and disorderly. White Reaper's lyrics—mostly about cool girls of their acquaintance, their failure to not act "so stu-pid" around the aforementioned cool girls, and said cool girls' difficulties getting home by themselves in the wee hours of the morning—aren't exactly laden with nuance, and that's no accident: anything more would just slow them down. That they're so clearly indebted to a few well-known sources—the Ramones, the earliest inklings of British Invasion-era proto-punk, and the Jay Reatard/Ty Segall axis of the current garage-rock renaissance—simply places them in a tradition, one they seem plenty keen to pick up, if not necessarily run with.
It's true that there's a built-in ceiling with music this gleefully steeped in the past: White Reaper may do what they do well, but what they do has been done many times before. A little energy goes a long way with this stuff, and White Reaper's got energy to spare. But a little personality goes even further, and White Reaper could probably stand to get a little more of themselves into their music to help shake up the tried-and-true formula to which they've adhered themselves. Still, it's a mistake to assume every band can (or should) be important, or influential, or essential in some highfalutin' way. Some bands are just fun, and White Reaper are just that.
