Dose
By Beverly Bryan
Pride
Parade’s Dose is an enjoyable, if not
beautiful, mess. If you love Nirvana, late-’80s
SST bands and hate having to take your music seriously you will love it.
Something about its extremely unfocused nature makes the album impossible to
take seriously. Raw, intense, stoned and
utterly pointless, this is the album playing in the background of every
no-parents rock 'n' roll party of television and film for the past three
decades. In that there are few real songs on this album, mostly just noodling
and thrashing around and an assortment of thrilling riffs, it’s sort of heavy
prog; the grungy track “Keep It Tight,” which does just that is a notable
exception. Essentially, if Pride Parade was a dude, he would get laid a lot
but few of his partners would consider him relationship material, and that
would probably suit him most of the time.
There is a possibly sensitive moment in “Chump Change” but it’s hard to
tell because the lyrics are completely unintelligible. It must be sensitive
though, because it’s a total buzzkill.
Nearly all the other songs are fun in that
talking-to-overexcited-drunk-people kind of way (listening while actually drunk and high
would feel redundant.) And from the slip-shod hardcore fun of “If You See Her,
Say Hello” to the morass of shrieking and sweating comprising the rest of the
album the sheer variety of Pride Parade’s fun is impressive. Yup, no doubt about it, Dose is full of
party. It’s just that you might not respect it in the morning.
