The Exies: Inertia : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In the two years that The Exies and producer Matt Serletic spent working on their ripping debut, Inertia, they evidently did some thinking about what's wrong with rock & roll record-making. Like many a dismayed fan starving for power, they wanted something other than puny-sounding computer rock. Inertia is a feast of audacious rhythm guitars supporting smart, insinuating hooks that can also smack you sideways. They'd grown tired of songs that wallow in one unchanging mood: Several of Inertia's highlights, including "Without" and "Calm and Collapsed," alternate between moments of tenderness and outbreaks of fury. They also wisely resisted the temptation to make a marathon: Inertia lasts a disciplined thirty-five minutes, and while not every one of its eleven songs blazes a new trail, even the cliched pieces -- such as "Creeper Kamikaze," which describes the effects of depression -- breathe with a hellbent energy that's been too long missing from rock & roll.

TOM MOON
(RS 914 – January 3, 2003)