Rock music hasn’t been the sound of popular youth culture in a very long time and there is no shortage of real, systematic causes: the irreversible narrowing of radio and print media, the economic and logistical nightmare of putting five dudes and their gear on tour and the undeniable fact that rock bands are extremely bad at creating content for music’s 24-hour news cycle. The competitive spirit, self-promotion, and obsession with quantifiable metrics that make hip-hop and pop music into a compelling spectator sport are invariably considered poor taste on and off-record. White Reaper, on the other hand, are from Louisville, KY—where the Muhammad Ali Center stands as a tribute to its native son who backed up the greatest anthology of shit talk ever heard. It’d be enough to have the sense of humor to call their album The World’s Best American Band. Even better if they have the heart to actually mean it. But White Reaper have the chops and the guts to make their hometown hero proud: bragging is when a person says something and can’t do it and White Reaper do what they say.
In White Reaper’s world, being coy about influence means you have something to hide and they proudly flaunt theirs like denim patches—Ramones, of course, but also Cheap Trick, Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Van Halen, rock bands who essentially functioned as pop. The opening title track poses The World’s Best American Band as both a concept record and self-fulfilling prophecy, piping in the kind of crowd noise that can only be generated in arenas far bigger than White Reaper may ever see in this lifetime. But as the Louisville Lip once said, “I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” “Rally up and dress to kill/Lace your boots and crush your pills,” Tony Esposito snarls before a ridiculous and necessary key change celebrates a victory lap after trying to snort the finish line: “If you fight and win/Throw the pool chairs in/And then confess your sins.” It’s the lowbrow wisdom of a band that’s either been there or seen enough Burt Sugarman videotapes to get the gist of it. But then a school bell rings and they’re back playing the teenage dirtbag on “Judy French,” a song that can make a Kia in rush hour traffic feel like a Camaro doing donuts in a high school parking lot.
The question remains as to why they stopped short of just calling it The World’s Best Band. They’re not the kind of caricatured, po-faced folk-rock that tends to be called “Americana.” But throwing “American” in the mix keeps their streak of self-deprecating farce intact: their debut was called White Reaper Does It Again. And the mere phrase “American Band” immediately triggers the wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner: “We’re coming to your town, we’ll help you party it down.” If these aren’t the only concerns of an American rock band, White Reaper believes that they should at least be the top two.
Up to this point, they’ve developed a reputation for wild live shows and fun, if rather derivative garage rock hooks, which made them not altogether different than 96% of the bands playing Burgerama any given year. But not only does the play-acting on The World’s Best American Band lend them a discernible personality, it makes their ambitions all the more obvious. In the tradition of modern classics like Is This It and It’s Never Been Like That, White Reaper are spiritually burning through a label advance but obsessing over efficiency and the bottom line like accountants. There’s nothing even remotely close to a ballad here, and in the slots where these would usually show up on a 10-song record, we get a blatant “Blitzkrieg Bop” homage (“Party Next Door”) and a 12-bar punk ripper that they could pass off as a Chuck Berry tribute (“Another Day”).
Who said craft had to be subtle? Unlike its puffier, unbalanced predecessor, The World’s Best American Band is mixed significantly louder than anything else you’re probably listening to right now and it’s equally glittery and gritty like a blood-caked switchblade—far more polished than the similarly indebted Sheer Mag, but with more edge to rule out any comparisons to the ’70s LARPing of Free Energy. And of course, the invocation of Grand Funk Railroad makes the connection from the band to Richard Linklater and his vision of boys and girls in America partying to British music all the more clear.
The Dazed and Confused comparisons are inevitable given Esposito’s snot-rocket vocals and the twin-guitar leads, while the keyboards and anxious drumming push White Reaper towards the MTV and new wave forms of pop-rock that typified Everybody Wants Some!! As with those films, a reductive reading of White Reaper can criticize the apparent lack of stakes and a worldview that only delays gratification rather than presenting actual conflict—boys will be boys and they’re always back in town. Yet, the words of “Eagle Beach” are as bashful as a Dashboard Confessional song: “I just wanna be a real good pair of your blue jeans/But you never wear the house when you’re wearing me.” And besides, whether it’s a high school dance or a garage rock festival, Esposito makes it clear on “The Stack” what he's learned about how rock becomes pop: “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.”
