Yellow Fever Blues in Bloomington, MN

Those feeling the itch to be offended by the album title, cover art and non-PC tunes like
"Love and Egg Roll"
should hopefully be pacified by the fact that this Brooklyn-based trio of gleefully trashy garage punks are themselves of Asian heritage, lending it all an overtly tongue in cheek aspect. The results on
Yellow Fever Blues
sound like a melding of early
Ramones
and the first
Dictators
album: stripped-down three-chord
punk
infused with a cars-and-girls trash aesthetic and some old-school
metal
influences that make the whole thing either terrifically dumb fun or ridiculously juvenile, depending upon the listener. The one thing the album lacks is either of those bands' knack for
bubblegum
pop
hooks, which is a shame: catchier tunes would keep these 12 songs from blending into each other as much as they do. ~ Stewart Mason