King Radio – Mr. K Is Dead, Go Home
Fronted by singer-songwriter-guitarist Frank Padellaro (who used to play bass in the Scud Mountain Boys’ road band), Boston’s King Radio debuts with a mercurial set of pop-rock that rolls easily from tune to tune and style to style. Whatever they’re up to, though, this five-man outfit always seems to couple rousing images with an unfettered garage-band feel.
The disc opens with “Into The Wild”, a jangled, bittersweet slice of pop rounded out by Ken Maiuri’s organ and a groovy vibrato chorus. Driven by some shifty harmonica and a rowdy guitar riff, the second track, “Mother’s House”, has some of Padellaro’s most provocative lines: “Today she bit the sheriff/When he came for my brother/And took his crystal meth away.”
Bassist Jim Smola’s “Tract House Queen” is a nifty suburban country rave-up. Guitarist David Trenholm offers a short, melancholy orchestral piece to introduce Padellaro’s equally sad but wry ballad “Karen”. And Padellaro and Smola team for a glum, Replacements-like musical lament, “King Of The Food Court”. By the time the disc closes with “I-95” — a kind of short shaggy-dog story from the wrong side of the tracks — it’s clear King Radio is capable of sophistication, silliness and a whole bunch of loose-limbed energy.