Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I love it when a group of guys with extra miles and pounds on them --- guys like me --- come out of nowhere like The Melroys and release a CD like WALLS WILL FALL. I have read The Melroys described as “Beatlebilly” and, just like WALLS WILL FALL, that sounds damn near perfect. Ever since I first got WALLS WILL FALL I have been finding an excuse to go driving on Saturday night for about 45 minutes or so with WALLS WILL FALL on the car stereo as loud as it will go, imagining Russ Knight or Dave Hull on the radio spinning tunes like “Revved Up And Ready To Go” and “I Can’t Slow Down.” That’s because listening to WALLS WILL FALL is like hearing new tunes by Del Shannon or Eddie Cochran or Link Ray--- not unreleased outtakes, but new tunes --- coming out right now. I will piss a lot of people off by saying this, but it’s true: WALLS WILL FALL sounds precisely like what The Traveling Wilburys were trying to do, and just missed.

The Melroys are a trio composed of drummer Mike Enderle, bassist Gregg Hopkins and guitarist Jordan Leiner. Enderle and Hopkins have been stalwarts of the St. Louis music scene since the 1970s, and with Randy Leiner (Jordan’s dad ) formed The Melroys in 1999. WALLS WILL FALL is their second proper CD and listening to it is like attending a comprehensive course on Roots Rock 101, executed flawlessly.

A number of projects of this type, while well done, often sound as if the artist is just visiting, if not slumming. Not so with The Melroys. I don’t know if it’s that the boys are a bit weathered --- though they wear it well --- or it’s just the fact that they’ve experienced so much of the music which has influenced them at a time when it was brand new. Whatever it is, it’s great. I mean, listen to the last minute or so of “Rough Around The Edges,” the way The Melroys break into that great edgy chorus over that killer guitar solo. There’s a woman I used to listen to music with in the early 1960s. We’re still friends. I played that minute for her and it brought tears to her eyes. Of course I had to play the rest of the CD for her, “Wrecking Ball” and “I Surrender” and “Nothing Left To Love,” and a killer version of Tom Petty’s “The Apartment Song,” a great song, but you know what? The Melroys original tunes beat Petty’s, and by more than a whisker. The Melroys have that deep reverb thing going on “Not Enough,” and the song…it’s somewhere we’ve all been, at one point or another.

If you like roots rock, you need WALLS WILL FALL. Hell, if you like music, period, you need WALLS WILL FALL. One of the best five CDs of this year. Easily. Maybe the best of this year. Twelve tunes without a second of filler. It doesn’t get any better than this. And you know what? My review doesn’t come close to doing it justice.