An Album Review: “Fall in Love Not In Line” by Kids on a Crime Spree

Fall in Love Not In Line, the new album by Kids on a Crime Spree (Slumberland) is a great piece of modern garage rock from a long-running Oakland CA trio. They fuse the noisy stomp of a New York DIY basement show with the bright staccato drive of west-coast pop punk.

The sound is big and the grooves are tight. It’s all buzz-and-reverb guitar, growling bass, and crashing drums, with fleeting, buried-in-the-mix statements of love and longing and social discontent.

The tracks were laid down on a restored TASCAM 16-track analog recorder, which gives an appealing retro feel. This fits the music, which brings to mind the loud and fun guitar pop groups from the ‘50s and ‘60s. At the points where the band slows things down just a tad, they sound a bit like the Velvet Underground at their heaviest.

With 10 songs in 25 minutes, no one of them sticks around long enough to get boring. There’s cool stuff here; Any non-FCC track is worth a spin. This is the band’s first full-length record.