Gaunt: Bricks And Blackouts

If you can play punk with conviction, it doesn't much matter what else you can or can't do. In a genre in which instrumental virtuosity is still as much a hindrance as a help, Gaunt thrives not because the band members play their instruments well, or because lead singer Jerry Wick writes great songs (they do, he does), but rather because they tear through their songs with an intensity that makes you want to believe them. Gaunt's fifth full-length, Bricks And Blackouts, finds the band ripping gamely through Wick's miserable history of confused love and relationships gone sour. Every song is packed with hooks, and each is driven home with an inexhaustible spirit that has rarely faded during the Columbus-based band's seven-year career. There is a sense of urgency to the album's best moments: "Mixed Metals," "Different Drum Machine," and "Far Away" burst out in a way that suggests Wick has had them bottled up for a while. The gentle acoustic sway of the title track is a curious but welcome departure from the stomping menace of the rest of the album, while "Pop Song" is exactly what it promises to be—a glorious slab of frenetic power-pop. Gaunt's arsenal of interesting ideas starts to run a little thin in places—"On Fire" and "Duh" are startlingly generic three-chord punk songs—but it's hard to hold that against Gaunt when every chord is kicked out with such fury.