Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

First off, there’s the name. I mean, a band called The Birthday Massacre has got to be great. Then there are the themes that have run through the band’s releases, the shadow covers that hint of things dark and dangerous and evil, let’s not forget evil. So you listen to WALKING WITH STRANGERS, the band’s third proper long play since forming in Toronto, Ontario in 2000. There’s none of the wall of noise, razor blade vocals you’ll find from the Satan worshipping bands that unfortunately is almost a caricature. No, The Birthday Massacre reminds me of the little girl that gets off the subway car in the Japanese science fiction movies, leaving entrails hanging and crimson painted walls behind her.

They possess a punk sensibility not unlike that of Terri Bozzio and Missing Persons from a couple of decades ago with a bit of ponderous Goth influence and a bit of The Edge and Philip Oakey and, yeah, maybe even a bit of Trent Reznor thrown in on “Red Stars,” the inaugural single In other words, there’s something attractively creepy about them. This goes double for lead vocalist Chibi If you were on a subway car and someone who looked like Chibi got on, you wouldn’t get off the car, but you’d think about it, even as you fantasized about offering her a seat on more than your lap. Her vocals have a baby doll sexiness about her, but she radiates an uneasiness about her that is irresistible. This is in no small part due to the guitar and synthesizer instrumentation that backdrops the tracks of WALKING WITH STRANGERS. A music supervisor for a horror flick could do wonders with the tracks of WALKING WITH STRANGERS in the soundtrack. Open with the ticking clock of “Science,” close with “Kill The Lights” or “Goodnight” and you’ve got your movie. The strange thing about WALKING WITH STRANGERS, however, is that even with all of the subtle darkness that infuses each and every track on the CD there is absolutely no reason why you couldn’t put any or all of it on terrestrial radio. WALKING WITH STRANGERS is not a sell-out, by any means, but skates that border of commerciality. You’d be vaguely uneasy if you heard it coming from your teenage daughter’s bedroom, but you wouldn’t try to make her turn it off. You better not, pig.

I’m not a Goth guy --- I haven’t had a black eye since Johnny Schwenker got a lucky punch in on me in third grade ---but I have been loving WALKING WITH STRANGERS from beginning to end since I started listening to it. I’ve had relationships that didn’t last that long. Don’t miss this one.