Show and Tell

On their full-length debut, Show and Tell, the Cambridge, MA-based Modifiers play a brand of rock & roll that is so simple and straightforward that it is extremely easy to be unimpressed by it all. However, perhaps rather than listening to them and wondering why they would want to play music so plain that it could easily be mistaken for something recorded 15 years earlier, you should listen to the Modifiers and wonder how they managed to keep their sound so focused on the fundamentals of rock without being sidetracked by keyboards, production tricks, Eddie Vedder vocals, and other gizmos. While the Modifiers have by no means reinvented the rock & roll wheel, and that hardly seems to have been their goal anyway, they have done a nice job of capturing the feel of big-riff college rock, as exemplified by the likes of the Replacements and the Lemonheads. To its credit, Show and Tell exhibits little of the self-righteous irony that typically plagues indie and college rock circles. Instead, the Modifiers offer lyrics that are so plain as to be cheesy or naïve at times, yet it's hard to hold it against the bandmembers because they make everything seem so heartfelt, right down to the sometimes shaky but boisterous and self-assured vocals. "Outbound," an homage to the band's busking hometown area hero Mary Lou Lord, is a bit saccharine, and in a town with such a rich musical history, Lord seems among those least worthy of tribute. Album highlight "Favorite Waitress" is an ode to a ritual held near and dear to many a bar patron: dressing up to buy alcohol from the waitress you have a crush on, and getting drunk and embarrassing yourself in front of her. The fact that this song has been lingering around the Modifiers' catalog since 1993 makes it seem that they will never quite match its endearing quality of capturing the simple charm of an everyday event, but odds are they'll keep trying. ~ Karen E. Graves, Rovi