D Generation: Through The Darkness : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Street-rat sneers, tight black pants and artfully messed-up hairdos: D Generation are the stuff that popped-up Seventies punk was made of. But this New York outfit is strictly a Nineties phenomenon; it amassed a cult following in sweaty clubs before signing to a major label some years ago, banging out music tailor-made for grimy pinball arcades and Brand X beer-drinking binges.

On their third album, D Gen pit rebound rhythms and three-chord melodies against Jesse Malin's Marlboro-ravaged voice, delivering a sound that is naive and eager yet also defiant and dirty. Malin sings, and occasionally screams, about grubby cityscapes, sad-sack relationships and peep-hole views into blackened souls. The tinny guitar solos and bratty backing vocals ("na, na, na") are refreshingly simple, except when the melodies become a little too sweet to digest or when Malin's voice shorts out like a toaster oven into a grating, flat buzz. D Generation borrow plenty of retro-rock cues -- Tony Visconti (Bowie, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy) produced this album -- but their lust for life is all their own. (RS 807)

LORRAINE ALI