JOSH TODD
You Made Me (XS Records)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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After leaving a successful act like Buckcherry, what's a guy to do? Well, Josh Todd chose a rather novel method of moving on. He answered an ad in a magazine called Music Connection. The story goes that Josh read an ad from a Salt Lake City band that had relocated to Los Angeles and was looking for a singer, and he called them from the newsstand. Just for kicks? A different approach? I dunno. I wonder how that conversation went. "Hi, I'm the singer from Buckcherry. Can I audition for your band?" "Yeah, we're the Beatles. Come on over, Buck."

Four dropped jaws later the Salt Lake City boys were jammin' with Josh, and they make a hell of a band. Nothing new here, but there's always room for ass-kicking hard rock with incendiary bass, brick-wall guitars and stick-splintering drums, all designed to wrap perfectly around the potent voice of Joshua Todd.

Listening to the CD from start to finish, it almost seems as if the band - and Todd claims it IS a band and not a solo thing, despite the name - recorded these in sequence and improved as they went along. The early songs are good but somewhat common, but somewhere just before the halfway mark it begins to grab. "Circles" has nearly every element a hard rock hit needs in this decade: catchy lyrics, powerful undercurrent, hooks, nifty musical ear candy around the edges. "Straight Jacket," on the other hand, is a hard rock fanatic's dream. It's pure. Slamming rhythm, a screamed mantra -- "Four walls, no windows, no fuckin' cigarettes" -- and a guitar sound like 400 Marshall amps played in water. You can almost hear the flesh frying. You Made Me just keeps getting better as it plays on. If someone had sent me two tapes, one with the first five songs and one with the last five, I would have said they were two bands, the first a second-band-wanna-be. Someone should have mixed these tunes up a little better. Too bad, because it may cost them some critical listens, and they should be heard, especially with some of the dismal crap that's passing for hard rock today.

© 2004 - DJ Johnson