Matt Skiba has had an interesting few months. While Alkaline Trio soldier on - still pretty great, still playing a lot of shows - he has been a supporting character in the disintegration and repackaging of Blink-182.
A welcome aside is his second release under the Sekrets moniker, ‘Kuts’. Here he’s again joined by Hunter Burgan of AFI and former American Nightmare sticksmanJarrod Alexander, with just a little twist added to the new wave-inflected punk of ‘Babylon’, their debut.
Nothing here strays too far from the Skiba wheelhouse, but the new textures that do crop up are handled nicely, with She Wolf’s glorious synth break particularly effective in context of the song’s straightforward goth-pop.
While out and out experimentation isn’t the order of the day, what ‘Kuts’ does represent is a fine slate of songs. They tend towards the mid-paced and perhaps belong in the same bracket as some of the more outwardly anthemic moments on ‘Crimson’, particularly the stand out Krazy and the opener, Lonely and Kold, which tracks his journey from the midwest to San Francisco and LA and has a chorus hewn from classic Skiba stock: “Tore out my liver when I left Chicago.”
The greatest pleasures to be derived from ‘Kuts’ are the same as those gleaned from Skiba’s day job, but truthfully there’s no real issue with that. He’s a very good songwriter and here has pulled together a record that, while pushing at the odd boundary, plays to his strengths. ‘Kuts’ is sardonic, hook-happy and dispatched in style, from red shades and blue lipstick down to She Said’s ‘gimmegimmegimmes’ or Krazy’s infectious squall of guitars.
Alkaline Trio Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat June 27 2015 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy Birmingham
Sun June 28 2015 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy Birmingham
Mon June 29 2015 - NOTTINGHAM Rock City
Tue June 30 2015 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE O2 Academy Newcastle
Thu July 02 2015 - LEEDS O2 Academy Leeds
Fri July 03 2015 - LEEDS O2 Academy Leeds
Sat July 04 2015 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Sun July 05 2015 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Tue July 07 2015 - GLASGOW O2 ABC
Wed July 08 2015 - BRISTOL O2 Academy Bristol
Thu July 09 2015 - LIVERPOOL O2 Academy Liverpool
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