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: More local Boston culture. This great early-’70s crime fiction dovetails with Scorsese movies like Mean Streets and subsequent Ben Affleck films and Dennis Lehane novels. Gone are the big romantic epic visions of gangsters, and here is focus on the gritty Joe Schmoes looking for an edge and a buck. The Friends Of Eddie Coyle is famously almost all dialogue. It careens along and was a great quick read after having slogged through the epic Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WtR-mi6VtU
