Reviews:

After poking fun at themselves Primus-style on a pair of missives—“Peebold”and “Piebald Sucks”—designed to beat any potential detractorsthe punch, these smarty-pants twenty-somethings continue to let listeners inon the joke with their latest record. “We’ve got the best job ever/yeah, we really got lucky,” sings Piebald’s Travis Shettel in hisdisarmingly off-kilter voice on “The Monkey Versus the Robot,” anotherwise brazen indictment of corporate culture. And when they’re notlaunching bottle rockets into the very brittle fabric of polite society, they’retaking on mainstream rock’s penchant for over-indulgent flatulence, goofingon Herb Alpert, and punctuating their songs with big metal riffs and testosterone-infusedgrunts. And Shettel’s matter-of-fact delivery and the song titles (“Look,I Just Don’t Like You”) practically bleed irony.

Remarkably, though, this Boston-area quartet has managed to achieve a very delicatebalance on We Are The Only Friends We Have; while they’re clearlytoo tongue-in-cheek to come across as completely sincere, they’re alsotoo emotionally-grounded to be pigeon-holed as absolutely irreverent. Still,aiming so squarely for the middle has its drawbacks: the record displays flashesof promise throughout (Shettel’s emergence as a pretty good confessionalsongwriter on “The King of the Road,” Jon Sullivan’s rock-steadydrumming), but from a musical perspective, the peaks and valleys really aren’tso far apart. At this point, what these guys need most is to temper their youthfulnavel-gazing with a healthy dose of experience, if only so that their songsmight ultimately resonate on a deeper emotional level. Now quit tapping thekeg and get back to work.