Crit: Street Sweeper Social Club

Street Sweeper Social Club is Tom Morello and Boots Riley. Who the other musicians are is apparently unimportant (although their studio drummer played with Corrosion of Conformity in 2005).

I don’t know what I wanted from SSSC. Basically this sounds like RATM-lite with Boots on vocals and I don’t know if anyone shoulda expected much different. Sounding like RATM isn’t the worst thing. The worst thing is when this album veers into RHCP “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes” territory. I kept having visions of the early 90’s funk revival. Yikes.

Why is Tom Morello holding back? There are no nutso “Battle of Los Angeles” guitar tricks. He really needs to either go all out crazy RATM Morello or do something less rhythmic and more traditional (like the acoustic-esque part of “Good Morning Mr. Smith”). Musically, I would have liked a less rap-rock style more in general.

However, I can’t bring myself to hate on SSSC that much. Boots saves most songs with sharp radical lyrics that listeners of The Coup are familiar with. Some songs have strong backing vocals and more of that would have tied things together sonically. I can easily listen to this over and over to dig deeper into the lyrics and feel that ‘right on’ revolutionary inspiration.

If SSSC continues as a real project, I could easily see the music getting better; getting less cliché and feeling more organic. This band already has rotation on MTV and is a great platform for the deserving lyrics of Boots Riley.

“My skin is black and my star is red!”

Hey Boots and Tom- If you read this, collabo with Sergio Robledo-Maderazo (from From Monument To Masses), Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, and/or Juan Alderette (both from The Mars Volta)!