Spanish Gamble
It’s All Coming Down
Paper and Plastick
Is it the palm trees? The unflinching heat? The desire to be known for something other than Miami Beach and Disney World? What is it about Florida punk bands that, like their opposite coast peers in California, is unmistakable in sound? Gainesville has unintentionally become a synonym for “the Florida punk rock sound.”
With one foot planted in hardcore and the other in melodic punk, it’s no surprise that Spanish Gamble now call the college town of Gainesville home. Their debut full length album, It’s All Coming Down, bears shades of Hot Water Music and any number of other bands whose names you may have overlooked on xeroxed show fliers plastered on the walls of your favorite sweaty little hole-in-the-wall bar or pub. Like Off With Their Heads, these guys excel at making hopeless and downtrodden lyrics (“Yeah we never had a chance to fix this/ We were born into a world on fire/ The wheels are moving and the brakes are fucking gone/ I don’t think we will stop until this world has turned to dust” – from “There Is No God Tonight”) that appear to be upbeat by laying down a melody catchier than a throat infection.
Dual guitars and just enough bass to complement the pogo-ready drums make some of these songs (“It’s All Coming Down,” “We Are the Restless”) good enough to stand alone as instrumentals. The slightly snotty and somewhat gruff vocals may take a bit of getting used to, but by the halfway point of the record – “We Are the Restless,” which also happens to be the best song of the bunch – it all just suddenly clicks together nicely.
Spanish Gamble: http://www.myspace.com/spanishgamble
