Detroit is famous for bands like the MC5 and The Stooges, White Stripes and of course KISS. Fellow Detroiters super*user may sound nothing like any of those bands but I would have thought it would take some KISS-sized balls to intentionally start your punk record with a riff ripped off from U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”! Maybe that one’s unintentional but I do assume that super*user is aware that their song “Decisions, Decisions" sounds like Jawbreaker’s “Ashtray Monument" off of 1994’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. As I doubt there’s any original riffs left in the world, I figure if you’re going to rip something off you might as well borrow from the best and those are arguably U2 and Jawbreaker’s best songs!
This punky power trio definitely doesn’t sound like U2 tho. At times they may sound like Jawbreaker but to me they sound more like bands that were likely influenced by Jawbreaker such as Small Brown Bike or Knapsack. Other times they are more orgcore like Revivr or Iron Chic. My favourite parts are the scrappy vocals, sometimes sung in unison as loose harmonies or anthemic shout-along parts. I’m also a sucker for the fuzzy bass. I would maybe call it post-hardcore but it appears they call themselves “bubblegrunge”- a term I’ve never used before but I may just start now! Not every song hits for me as hard and I wonder if that’s due to this being more than one songwriter in the band, but I’d be a liar (not to mention a hypocrite;) if I said that was necessarily a bad thing. There’s definitely lots of cool hooks going on here, if there wasn’t I wouldn’t be wasting their time or mine writing this.
The White Stripes were masters of tributary pastiche and look where they ended up so these dudes may be onto something. There’s enough variety in the songwriting that there could be others that I’m not catching on to, but imo there’s nothing wrong with a respectful homage. The songs where I can hear it are the ones I like the best. There’s something about that familiarity that’s comforting, even though I don’t know these guys at all it feels like we may come from the same place. I don't mean Detroit and Vancouver, I mean, grow’r-not-show’r catchy melodic punk.
