Send "Ted Leo & The Pharmacists " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Cred is essentially goodwill borne of good instincts. Ted Leo's got some fine instincts, and over the course of his career he's built up cred at an enviable rate. Lifers like Leo, unafraid of inserting passionate personal politics into ebullient guitar rock, don't come around too often, and few can boast a track record like his. The ease with which he synthesizes punk and its many roots and branches into something distinctly his own has only occasionally showing signs of slowing down.Still, you couldn't be blamed for being a little worried about Leo's dedication in the wake of his flimsiest full-band effort to date, 2007's Living With the Living. Living had its moments, for sure, but it was an overlong, unbalanced, occasionally sluggish record, one that felt especially weary in the wake of 2004's vitriol-guided Shake the Sheets. It felt almost instantly like one of those long, all-over-the-place punk records you admire and namecheck but don't ever pull out; the kind of thing that's historically ushered in the sunset of a once-firebrand career. The Brutalist Bricks, the first Pharmacists LP for the increasingly punk-leaning Matador, feels like a massive corrective to Living's letdowns. It runs 20 minutes shorter and has tauter, better tunes. After the bitter Shake the Sheets and the resigned Living, Bricks feels hopeful, purposeful, direct-- a mood helped along by the Pharmacists' most impressive musical showing on wax since 2003's masterful Hearts of Oak. One never doubted Leo's passion, but Bricks finds him sounding rejuvenated, a refugee from the Bush regime poking his head above ground after lying low for Living and finding that now's the time to get to work....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Punk rock idealism has always put great faith in the people, a semi-fictional mass of ordinary folks who, once freed from the influence of big government, big corporations and organized religion, can be relied on to do the right thing. It’s the impetus behind fist-pumping, head-banging anthems from the Clash down to Fugazi, and, to be honest, it’s hard to square with the Tea Party backlash. The people, it turns out, are Medicare beneficiaries terrified of socialized medicine, working people hanging on by the hair of their teeth and still mad about the estate tax, and fundamentalist Christians who care deeply about the value of human life right up to the point of childbirth and not a second beyond. They watch a lot of Fox News. Ted Leo, one of the last socially-engaged punk rockers standing, has the unenviable challenge of rallying “the long-manipulated and the willfully dumb” (“Mourning in America”) to the cause of justice. The brutalist bricks are flying in his sixth full-length, tossed by an angry mob that should, in its own interest, be on the other side. Though images of suicide bombing, torture and the end of the world flit through his songs, it’s the people themselves that seem the scariest. And yet, paradoxically, the complexity of this worldview gives his songs an added punch. There are no unadulterated good guys in the ravaged world he holds to account, no hard truths, no absolutes, and that, in some way, makes his principled stance more touching. “We strive to survive, causing the least suffering possible,” he sings in “Ativan Eyes,” and it’s a modest manifesto, a kind of last stand against selfishness gone epidemic. Leo’s last album, Living with the Living was a hodgepodge of styles — a little pub rock, a bit of hardcore, a reggae song, an Irish ditty — and it felt a bit like a series of studies, rather than a fully-conceived whole. This one draws on the same range of influences, but pulls them together more effectively. Undulant reggae basslines snake through new wave melodies, florid Celtic soul falsettos flitter over hammerhead punk rampages, Oi! band shout-outs bump fists with spiraling Thin Lizzy guitar solos. The pieces are all there, but fitted into a cohesive statement. Even the misty CSNY folk ballad “Tuberculoids Arrive in Hop” slips easily into its slot, though you have to wonder where they found all those crickets in Brooklyn....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| It would be unfair to say Ted Leo is on autopilot at this point of his career; after all, he's consistently delivered dynamic, top-tier punk rock that's continued to resonate with indie kids and your NPR-listening dad for over a decade now. But if we're going to be honest, he's based his entire lifework on a single style—that being, of course, topical, hyperactive libretto over immediately gratifying hooks. Luckily for us, that style has remained remarkably fresh over the venerable span of eight records. His latest, The Brutalist Bricks, changes no games, nor does it reinvent any careers, comfortably subsisting as another 13-song collection from the ever-churning Leo. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Brutalist Bricks's only immediately tangible curveball is a thickly strummed, "Hey Ya!"-esque acoustic guitar that permeates into the foreground on some of the record's otherwise more suppressed tracks; everything else sustains the breakneck pace Leo has maintained for years. The album opens with a colossal stage-smasher, "The Mighty Sparrow," which hits the same highway-yearning synapses as "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?," quickly bending into "Mourning in America" with an equally feverish rip-roar, targeting its castigation at American political culture. That's followed by "Ativan Eyes," which, with its high-low chord progression, veiled lexicon, and watery bass-bump glory, is probably the most familiar track on the record. The aforementioned acoustic guitar is hardly hushed, and bubbles over with the same enthusiasm we've come to expect from the Pharmacists, backing up such high-reaching vocabulary as "No one lives forever now!" This is a Ted Leo album all right. Despite its obvious ingredients and well-worn criterion, Brutalist Bricks comes off peculiarly fresh. There are simply not a lot of people making the same sort of music Leo is these days; his audacious conviction is so easily appreciable (and hard to recreate) that he's almost immune to diminishing returns. And after a three-year break following 2007's (slightly underwhelming) Living with the Living, it seems as good a time as ever for a new Leo album, even if all it does it simply reaffirm him as one of indie's most prolific and continually passionate treasures....full text |
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