I wrote a very long, very detailed review of Born Strange, the debut release from Haley Bowery and the Manimals while in a haze of sleep deprivation coupled with a massive caffeine high.  I covered the origins of punk, the influencial bands, the social and political climates of the time and at one point I think I may have composed an ode to Joey Ramone.

You all see where this is going.

When I went to post my masterpiece of music reviewing this morning I discovered none of it made any sense.  I even found a section where I explain that while I consider Cut Me Mick to be an awesome punk song, I still can’t buy a car from Micah Schnabel. Yeah, that kind of ‘made-no-sense’. So I stared at it for a few minutes, then in the tradition of good punk, I went back and stripped the review down to the very basics.

The album blasts off with the track Born Strange and the admonition to ‘take your clothes off like you got no mama’ and rocks out from there. My favorites are Undertow with its 90′s grunge sound, Dream of the Chelsea Hotel, which sounds like someone ran over the Velvet Underground with a metal band and this song was all that survived, and All Lies just because it has the line ‘I’d leave it all on the line, got a titanium spine’.

The music slows up a bit on the melodic ‘29‘, which is more pop than rock or punk but not so sweet that I didn’t enjoy it.

Bottom line, this was a pretty cool album and I liked it enough to recommend you all pick it up. You can check out more music from the band and download a copy of 29 for free on their website, get updates on their Facebook page or follow the band on Twitter @HaleyBowery.

Born Strange will release on Tuesday June 19, 2012.

- Kit