Touch and Go

They look for all the world like a rockabilly band — oil-slick pompadours, long sculpted sideburns, string bass, semi-acoustic Gretsch guitar, the whole bit — and sometimes they even sound like one. But this Zürich-based trio exhibits a healthy willingness to push past the boundaries of the music they clearly love and respect. It's probably significant that "Don't Know Too Much About It," the first song on Touch and Go that offers a clear nod to rockabilly tradition, also prominently features the line "this is never a rockabilly song." Some tunes incorporate traditional elements, like the minor-key arpeggio that defines the understructure of "Secret Club," without letting those elements turn the song into something as predictable as a punkabilly update. Others, like "That Will Never Do" and "Sex and Drugs and Rocks Through Your Window," are straight-ahead punk rock rave-ups; "Go to Hell" actually steals the main riff from "Rock Lobster" and turns it into angry, high-octane punk. And a few really are rockabilly songs, and some of those are excellent: "I Don't Care" sounds like something Elvis Costello might have put on his first album if he'd been even angrier and if he'd been just a bit less shy about his country influences. A few straddle the punk-rockabilly line more ambivalently, and those aren't necessarily the most compelling ones. This album's weakness isn't so much a real weakness as a lack of knockout strength — on the evidence, these guys have tremendous talent and great energy, and they just need a songwriting breakthrough, a moment of clarity that will show them the path to more compelling hooks without selling out. They'll get there.