Nothing if not a model of consistency, Buffalo Tom has been making the same decent-to-great music since 1992’s Let Me Come Over. Actually the Massachusetts trio’s third album, Let Me Come Over feels more like a debut, as it zeroed in brilliantly on the group’s strengths, namely the earnest, imagery-laden, acoustic-gone-electric songwriting of guitarist Bill Janovitz and bassist Chris Colbourn and the propulsive punk undercurrents supplied by drummer Tom Maginnis. Judging by the band’s latest, Skins (Scrawny), it’s a formula that still has legs. Skins is the group’s eighth album and second since reuniting after a 10-year (sort-of) break, and its world-weary lilt and been-there/done-that themes make it the perfect grown-up companion piece to Let Me Come Over’s reluctant coming-of-age angst. It may be the best thing the band has done since that LP. Buffalo Tom will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with Janovitz and Colbourn.
Janovitz: I was one of those people who saw Apple fans as a cult, despite all the good things I heard from people I respect. Until I got my first iPod in 2000. I was hooked by the combination of thoughtful design and functionality. Then I got a MacBook, iPhone, iPad, AirPort Express, etc. I have become full-on cultist fanboy. So now I have everything streaming through my house: music, movies, pictures. I remember back when I was a teenager, there was this story about a big-time local morning FM DJ who had in his house a mechanical record-delivery system that would bring the records he dialed up from his enormous library the basement—something like living in a giant jukebox. I have no idea if this was pure myth or not. But I was in awe. Imagine, then, if someone had told me that in 20 years or so, you could watch a Kurosawa movie on a whim, interrupt it to listen to the Dead Boys, show a slideshow of your kids or watch a live clip of the MC5 on YouTube—all on the same system within a few minutes of each other, anywhere in your house. It is a wondrous age.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6nasmkg7A
