Overnight Lows

Dead Moon/Pierced Arrows made it safe for old married people to make punk rock. Now we have Overnight Lows with a new record on Goner called City of Rotten . Very nice in the Ramones/Angry Samoans/Zero Boys hard-fast-simple traditions.

Here's the beginning of my Dusted review...

A photo inside City of Rotten Eyes shows Marsh and Daphne Nabors face to face with a mic between them, no more than an inch or so separating their wide-open mouths. The photo makes it clear that they are singing – or, more likely, shouting – at the top of their lungs, in sync for the moment, but apt, in the next flash, to sputter pinball caroming call-and-response. They look totally charged about what they’re doing, as if they’re right in the middle of an adrenalized flow that makes concepts like happiness seem like an abstraction.


This may not be everyone’s idea of how to spend a life with a loved one, or to grow old gracefully or even to make a living, but there’s a lot to recommend it. Marsh and Daphne have been making music as the Overnight Lows since 1995 and before that as the Comas. They picked up a new drummer in 2005, namely Paul Artigues, an alumnus of Die Rotzz (and also, oddly, a featured chef on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives), who helped them toughen up their sound. But for the most part, the Overnight Lows are doing what they’ve done most of their adult lives – hard, fast, antagonistic punk rock. They’ve just never gotten around to recording it until now.

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