The booklet with The Danger's new album "A Northern City Shift" carries the phrase, "specially designed to help you defy noise ordinances."

Reading that statement prior to listening to the actual album might allude to an hour's worth of fast, crunchy guitars and not-sung-but-screamed vocals awaiting your ears. But after a couple of songs, you realize The Danger's music is actually a hook-driven, if poppy, balance between bright '60s Britpop and slightly darker '70s American punk, and is no stranger to both the handclap anthem nor the sweet serenade.

So why, then, the noise disclaimer? Because you're going to play it loudly. And you're going to dance.

"A Northern City Shift" is the third release from The Danger, who, depending on which year it is, could be considered a Milwaukee band, although the five members -- Ian Michael Lund, Richard Allen IV, Thomas Culkin, Jered Piencikowski and Michael Pawlowicz -- are so scattered about that the tag "Midwest band" seems more appropriate.

And locale seems arbitrary anyway when you've mastered a new sound that gets its style from all corners of the musical globe -- John Lennon, The Clash and T-Rex, to name a few.

"A lot of people will say that 'A Northern City Shift' is a complete departure from our older material," says drummer Piencikowski. "And for the most part, that is true."

The band's traded in a bit of the glam that kissed 2004's "Sketches From A Small Room" and has bulked up on guitar triumph and Beatles-esque harmonies that give the new album a very rich, very pure rock 'n' roll-in-it's-truest-form quality. Powerhouse opener "Other Kids" sets the pace with punchy energy and the rest of the album follows suit, taking measured cues from the jangle of power pop to the airiness of '60s ballads.

As a whole, the album is diverse enough to keeping things sonically interesting, but embraces a signature cohesiveness that is nothing if not highly addictive. If the band has changed, it's done so for the better.

After overcoming a few major hurdles -- losing a core band member and getting robbed, which rendered the band instrument-less and out one practice space -- the band sucked it up and poured everything it had into writing and perfecting new songs.

"Basically, the band moved with the music and we followed like a hungry dog, just waiting to see what it would feed us next," says Piencikowski. "We honestly go through more hell than any band should. But at the end of the day, we ended up with 'A Northern City Shift' and I feel that this recording is our strongest yet."

Yet for as much as this band has evolved, some "Shift"'s strongest moments are actually the impressive result of very early songs -- "One Last Night," "By Nightfall," and "Love Letters To Joan Of Arc" -- finally finished or re-worked into something fresh.

The biggest change to "Love Letters" is Culkin's inclusion of a spoken word segment -- his self-declared "homage to Patti Smith, using Joan Of Arc as (his) archetypal powerful female."

"Rock songs and poetry differ in some very fundamental ways, and I write both, so I figured it was high time the two worlds should meet," says Culkin. "With this said, I wanted to try to find a passage of music that could be used to convey a much more literary style, I wanted it to capture the listener in a different way."

And by taking more chances, and embracing the inevitable maturity that comes with years of practice, The Danger is back with a fierce edge and a mission to reintroduce soul back to rock and roll.

The Danger's heading out on tour and has plans to return to Milwaukee to play a show somewhere, sometime this fall. Keep your eyes open -- this is a band you have to see live.

Post a comment / write a review.