Missile My Doll - "The Brakeman's Manual Demo"

Album review by Danny Alexander

Frontman Mike Allmayer (PedalJets/Grither) has been making deeply personal and provocative music for well over a decade, and these four songs pull together the best of what he's learned as he's moved from Beatlesque postpunk to noisy experimentalism through gothic heavy rock and back to more fundamental elements of rock and roll.

You can hear the balance of these elements in the opening seconds here. "Hey Man" starts with a delicate guitar figure sparkling over a bold rhythm section that attacks with both razors and blunt instruments. These elements that seem to fight each other actually shape a classic rocker about, fittingly, finding your bearings (a status that immediately begins to slip away in the swells of the following song, "Truth Serum"). This mini-album manages a climax with the gorgeous, "George Jones," a sprawling, psychedelic loveletter that, by sheer force of will, replaces regret with acceptance.

Still, The Brakeman's Manual Demo is too smart a record to think it can rest on such a plateau. With the closing explosion of hard rocking energy, Allmayer cries out, "I still wanna kill you with whatever makes you happy"--a reminder that old relationships don't just fade away-they come back and bite you in the ass.

--Danny Alexander