Cato Salsa Experience A Good Tip for a Good Time label: Emperor Norton released: 05.14.02 our score: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Over the past few years bands like The Strokes and The Hives and The White Stripes have helped to usher in a resurgence in popularity of the "garage rock" sound. This resurgence has undoubtedly been a violent reaction by some of us in the music listenening community who simply said "enough!" to the unrelentless onslaught of pop fluff that had taken over the airwaves in the late 90s and early 2000's. Still, there's been this overwhelming feeling that this neo-70s rock revival has been a bit too over-the-top, and this has led to a feeling that the revival has been a bit staged. The Strokes are too pretty, The Hives are too gimmicky... but that could also just be the result of the marketing machine that's attached it's parasitic self to the acts.

Regardless, one things that all these acts have been missing is the rawness and fun that usually goes hand-in-hand with rock of this genre. This is where Cato Salsa Experience comes in. Hailing from Norway (yes, like The Hives), the band's debut album with Emperor Norton Records does have this edge. It's a 60's-styled garage rock freakout. It's The Monkees on acid. It's irreverent guitar/keyboard rock, and it'll make you dance until your pants come off.

A Good Tip for a Good Time finds its highlights with the churning gogo dance pollutions of "So the Circus is Back in Town," and "Time to Freak Out!" Where the album's biggest weaknesses lie, however, is when the band sways away from its mood of drunken dance debauchery; . when they try to craft an honest-to-goodness song (i.e. "I Can Give You Anything").

Cato Salsa Experience aren't crafting the world's greatest rock songs, and they're not trying to. A Good Tip for a Good Time is, rather, an honest-to-goodness garage freakout with little care for being anything else.

They sound like a good beer should taste: kind on the palate but easy enough to get drunk to. There's a reason you don't drink Champagne every night.
16-Jan-2003 5:17 PM

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