La Rocca

The Truth

(Dangerbird)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Indie bands often have—or pretend to have—humble ambitions, and the notion of populism is anathema to hipsters.  La Rocca says “to hell with that!” and comes out swinging for the fences on The Truth, their full-length debut on L.A. dynamo label Dangerbird.  Marinated in booze and a healthy blend of rock giants, The Truth finds the Irish expats (and current Angelenos) outgrowing the cozy venues that they’ve been calling home.

Instead of pretending to not feel the shadow of U2, La Rocca skips straight into it with grand rockers like “Non Believer,” the track that finds frontman Bjorn Baillie doing his clearest channeling of Bono-dramatics.  Ambition can be respected even in crap bands, but writing songs like you’re rock stars playing the Staples Center probably isn’t the best career advice for young bands, unless they can pull it off with La Rocca’s skill and panache.  The blueprints are clear, and aren’t limited to their most famous musical countrymen; the Stones and the Faces and even Whiskeytown seem to be among the other contributors of inspiration.  In time, La Rocca will be expected to digest these massive influences and produce something somehow more progressive than The Truth, but, as a debut, it delivers the goods, and provides a great soundtrack to party afterglows here at the end of summer.

Starting off in their own party mode, La Rocca opens The Truth with an anthemic paean to the electric and transitory years of your twenties.  It’s effective whether you’re looking forward to your “20 Something Life” or watching it retreat in the rearview—or, of course, if you’re right in the thick of it, like the song itself.  Elsewhere, and really throughout, the lyrics come to the listener through the vague but important-sounding fog that sets over most classic rock records (i.e. “I know a place I’m going to’s like nowhere that you’ve been / Goodnight, goodnight”).  On paper, that’s a clunker—and it has company.  Not only that, but that particular chorus sounds a little bit like Bon Jovi.  No worries—fleshed out with dense layers, poppy production (courtesy of Tony Hoffer), and heartfelt vocal, “Goodnight” becomes a touching centerpiece.  The Truth can be told in a lot of ways, and it doesn’t always take the right words.  Sometimes the feeling is enough for a hell of a story.