Verbena: La Musica Negra : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Verbena hail from alabama, but their sexy hard rock sounds like it would fit in perfectly in some Sunset Strip club. Full of chunky, wailing guitars and singer-guitarist Scott Bondy's understated sneer, La Musica Negra is the rare vogue-ish, new-rock-flavored album lacking in both confessional angst and garage-rock sounds - perhaps it's no surprise that the band was championed by Foo Fighter Dave Grohl (he produced their major-label bow, Into the Pink, in 1999). On a succession of solid rockers, the best of which are "Devil in Miss Jones" and the sunny boogie "White Girls," Bondy sounds alternately stoned and pissed off. His playing invokes sleazy metal touchstones from the Seventies and Eighties without ever slumming, and he manages to make the slow junkie-blues "Dirty Goodbyes" into a pretty, tuneful lament. This is fashionable to be sure, but shallow it ain't.

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(From RS 924, June 12, 2003)