Poster Children: DDD

Eight full-length albums into its career, it's pretty clear that Champaign, Illinois' Poster Children will never have a major commercial breakthrough. At this point, the group firmly resides in the realm of its fellow Midwesterners in House Of Large Sizes, who never fit on a big label, who never had the hits they deserve, and who unequivocally stomp ass live. Poster Children has always been a fantastic live band, and that energy has translated into big-budget albums that process everything into slick, futuristic anthems (RTFM, Junior Citizen), as well as more modest collections that don't capture the group's considerable energy (last year's New World Record). On DDD, Poster Children finds a nice balance, opening with the blistering live energy of "This Town Needs A Fire" and effectively varying the tempo with slower, seething pop-rock songs such as "Daisy Changed" and "Silhouette." (A few late-album instrumentals, "Judge Freeball" and "Peck N' Paw," are too lively to be considered the filler they might have been.) Overall, the ingredients remain the same: Like its predecessors, DDD is built on a foundation of conventional guitar-rock, but with periodic space-age touches and Rose Marshack's backing vocals to soften the blow. And, as always, there are a couple of new mission statements in the form of "The Old School And The New" and, even better, "Zero Stars": "We don't play arenas / We only play in bars / We don't need to pay someone to plug in our guitars." It's no secret that studio albums are secondary to Poster Children's delirious live shows, but DDD is a welcome return to form for those who can't resist taking the band home. Who could blame them