The music of B Boys recalls that of Salad Boys, EZTV, and any number of bands from New Zealand. However, B Boys, from New York City, manage to still make this sort of thing seem nearly fresh. The group's newest record, Dudu, drops on Captured Tracks on Friday, and it's full of youthful energy and melodic spark. In short, it's the kind of release that's easy to love on first listen.
Opener "Cognitive Dissonance" roars out of the gate like some grubbier version of those early Strokes singles, while the excellent "Pressure Inside" sounds like old New York punk stirred up with a dash of Britpop. Lots of what's here on Dudu flies past with an admirable amount of fire and fury, while a few numbers, namely "Ceremonies of Waste" and "Another Anthem", take things down a notch in order to offer up music that owes huge debts to Television and Johnny Thunders. To acknowledge that isn't to diminish what B Boys have accomplished here, but to simply state that some of this is fun precisely because the band cribbed from the right sources. Not a whole lot on Dudu feels at all original, but neither does most rock-and-roll. At least B Boys are cranking things up here on Dudu, enough that one can enjoy the sonic assault without worrying too much about where all the pieces are coming from.
Dudu is out on Friday via Captured Tracks.
More details on B Boys via their official Facebook page.
[Photo: B Boys]