Moonshine Romance

Moonshine Romance

There should be a big sticker plastered to the front of Moonshine Romance’s eponymous debut CD: For Mature Audiences Only.

Not because of any overarching adult themes or overbearing language, but because this is an album specifically aimed toward a crowd that can sing along to more than one Gin Blossoms song or that fervently believes Pearl Jam’s No Code is one of the Top 10 albums ever. (Or, thirtysomethings.)

The band (Jerame Gray on vocals and guitar, Scott Branton on bass, Ryan Blackwell on guitars and vocals and Mark Ruhl on drums) seems to be searching out that soft spot in rock-music history post-Nevermind but before nu metal and the emo-lution of rock took over, when songs were catchy and hook-heavy and filled your ears without making them bleed.

Musically, the band most closely resembles Pearl Jam. Like, a lot.

The songs “Surrender” and “Crowfeathers” sound like Moonshine Romance is using riffs that Mike McCready and Stone Gossard tossed aside.

“Shadows of Space” mixes the driving, chunky sound of Pearl Jam’s “Spin the Black Circle” with the bluesy, jangly chorus of the Gin Blossom’s “Hey Jealousy.”

In fact, most of the band’s choruses have a sing-songy style similar to the Blossoms.

Vocally, there are a lot of grunge-soaked verses, but occasionally the band stretches into some odd territory.

You’d swear you waded into a Tool demo tape when the first song, “Ophelia,” kicks in — albeit without the power of Maynard James Keenan’s voice.

And on the song “Deconstruct,” Moonshine Romance revives the free-association styling of At The Drive-In and Nirvana. (Sample: “Bad heel/broken bones/tobacco burn/come home.”)

The eight-track disc plays out like a journey to the heart of that soft spot of rock history.

The only problem is the band didn’t learn a valuable lesson from that era: Bands without progressive elements (Gin Blossoms, Toadies, Goo Goo Dolls, Tripping Daisy) were just audio displacement.

Those bands had songs that would jump up on the radio, make you smile, tap your foot and sing along, and then were quickly forgotten, displaced by another song that had those exact qualities.

Meanwhile, the bands that pushed boundaries of sound and agendas (Tool, Pearl Jam) stood out.

Moonshine Romance captures some aspects of both.

I’d like the album a lot more if it kept to the straight-ahead, catchy tracks such as “Gone,” “Deconstruct” and “Deprived,” which show promise. But there are plenty of times, like the song “American Household,” when the band falls into the audio-displacement category.

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infobox-hr-separator /> infobox-head>Find it
Moonshine Romance is available online at ourstage.com/fanclub/ moonshineromance or by contacting the band at moonshine_romance @yahoo.com.

See them Catch Moonshine Romance with Auternus and Latin at 9 p.m. Saturday at The Brick, 1727 McGee St.