Pawn Shoppe Heart

20 in 2024: Pawn Shoppe Heart

The Von Bondies are Detroit City Garage Rock Revival band that saw minor success in the mid 2000's with their single "C'mon C'mon". It was featured in various video games, was the theme song for the hit show Rescue Me, and was pretty much their only claim to fame in the eyes of the mainstream at this point. The band would go through many lineup changes in the brief span of their career and eventually disband in 2011. During their time as a band they would play with and open for other Detroit area rock bands including The White Stripes, and were often considered one of the guys when talking about Garage Rock Revival in this time period.

The album Pawn Shoppe Heart is their second album, and first one on a major label. It features plenty of blues-flavored garage rock and indie rock bangers with loud guitars, snappy bass and absolutely vicious drumming. Frontman Jason Stollsteimer has an incredible voice for the band's style, it intense and emotive and he's got a solid range. Founding member and bassist Marcie Bolen provides backup vocals and even lead on a few songs and I actually found her vocals to not be as exciting, but they get the job done. I often found myself absolutely sucked in by Don Blum's drumming though. It was like a whirlpool maelstrom of intense drum fills and pounding toms that I really vibed with.

The songs within the album are all pretty good. The opening tracks provide a good introduction with a solid mix of loud garage rock with a modern twist, and then the lead single comes in and smashes everything to pieces. "C'Mon C'Mon" is such a great fucking track. It starts with a muted guitar line before crashing in with desperate cries for a long gone childhood nostalgia, and without any bullshit careens into the chorus that demands you to sing along, It has the catchiness of a good Franz Ferdinand tune but backed with the powerful rock riffage of a rowdy AC/DC tune. It's so perfect, but like a great Garage Rock song is known for, it ends in a flash. Honestly though I could listen to this song over and over again and not get tired of it. It's by far the best song in this whole record.

The next tune was also a single for the album and "Tell Me What You See" is not a bad track at all. It's not as flashy as the previous track but lyrically delves into a rough relationship and the composition of the track is good and tasteful with another great chorus and guitar solo to boot. The first half of the record ends with this silly song called "Been Swank", which I actually have very little to say about. It's kinda fun but a tad forgettable to be honest. The midway point features the album's longest track with "Mairead". A dirge-like blues rock song about a person whom Jason was affiliated with, who seems to have left him in emotional and psychological ruin. If it weren't for Jason absolutely selling the vocal performance I would be a little more lukewarm on this song than I am currently. The passion is felt and usually songs like this tend to drag for me, but I was alright with it after repeated listens.

Sadly the album is quite front-loaded cause the rest of the LP never reaches the same intense highs that it did. Everything else after "Mairead" is rather typical-sounding rock music for this style, and other than the super catchy and upbeat "The Fever", nothing really sticks out for me compared to songs like C'mon or Mairead. The closing track actually pulls out the passion and anguish again for a rather effective closer, so I will give it props for that. It does manage to somewhat stick the landing.

Overall this album is pretty bread and butter rock music, but it's rather short and at least has some stellar moments at the beginning, but hey if you need some loud rock music this album is definitely something to put on. I had a good time with it despite it's shortcomings and I think that it's worth it at least for the incredible single which is "Cmon Cmon".

"Now we grieve for now it's gone, things were good when we were young"