Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)i have to admit, i was biased towards this disc even before it arrived at my house. i have been to kona on two different occasions and overall, i have spent nearly a month in this beautiful town on the big island of Hawai'i. also, the music of sublime is some of the most interesting and enjoyable music on the planet. so when i heard the pepper song 'stone love' on a reggae sampler, it sounded alot like a sublime groove, so i figured i would check out the disc, and after listening to it a few times, here's what i have come up with:
musically, 'kona town' has a great sound. it was well recorded and well produced. the reggae grooves are tight and make you bob your head. the singer's voice has a sound that is very reminiscent of the late (and legendary) bradley nowell, and the songs do borrow from sublime, sometimes heavily. (the band photo inside pepper's c.d. booklet looks an awful lot like the band photo inside the booklet of sublime's self titled album) but if you are a fan of sublime's music, (ALL of sublime's music) you would know that the comparison between these two bands pretty much ends here.
what seperates sublime from pepper was the sheer unpredictability of bradley, bud, eric and miguel's musical melding, and bradley's even less predictable lyrical configurations. nearly all of pepper's lyrics are on the up-and-up, whereas bradley would be spitting some snatch from a classic reggae track, and all of the sudden he was talking about shooting his girlfreind or hitting the bong too hard. this type of unpredictablity is nowhere to be found in pepper's music, and most of their lyrics range from being a bit immature to downright boring. pepper tends to mix mostly hard rock (not metal, hard rock) with thier reggae, and come off a bit more like 311 than sublime, who had a much more punk influenced sound. there is a bit of punk mixed in there, but it is simply not on the same level as sublime.
because of the solid reggae sound on the album, all of pepper's songs could have been great. 'stone love' is probably what i would consider the best song on the album. 'tradewinds' is also a good song, it sounds a bit like jack johnson (another fellow hawai'ian). some of the other tracks are fair, like 'ho's', "dryspell", and 'stormtrooper', which has a guest vocal appearance by josh fischel of bargain music. (incidentally, fischel also produced sublime's 'stories, tales, lies and exaggerations' documentary, a dvd that i would highly recommend to any fans who have not yet seen it) most of the other songs are rehashes of these songs, with very little change in attitiude or intensity. even the parts of the songs that are supposed to rock hard sound somewhat tame and uninspired. i do like the picture drawn on the c.d. booklet though, a water color of the center of the kona coastline, looking in at the bridge on ali'i drive, right near lulu's and huggo's (if you have been to kona, you know what i mean), or at least i think that's what it is, it looks very similar, and that made me smile and remember hanging out by that bridge back in '01, hooking up with the best doja i ever did puff on.
overall, pepper's 'kona town' is a fair effort, made for those who are into the sound of reggae without needing to be inspired or entertained by lyrical style or messages. i am not sure what kind of following they have in the 'high school jock/college frat boy' and 'cheerleader/sorrority girl' circles, but i would imagine that they sell alot of discs to those groups of fans. for fans of sublime looking at possibly buying this disc (if you are reading this, i would imagine that you are at the very least a casual sublime fan), you will appreciate the attempt at the sound, but you will be dissapointed when there is no mention of a "g.i. joe kung-fu grip on your mushroom-tip" or "the answer always waiting at the liquor store" or "a fifteen pack of old milwaukee, a dalmatian and a girlfriend but i ain't got no money". if you don't mind the lack of humor in the lyrics and lack of intensity in the music (and you can get the disc used for 7 bucks like i did), go ahead and pick it up.
pepper is a fair band, but that aren't key!
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