AVOID ONE THING - Chopstick Bridge (CD) (2004)

CHOPSTICK BRIDGE is the second album by Boston's Avoid One Thing, but in many ways it marks a vital new beginning. The band's 2002 self-titled debut was written and recorded almost entirely by bassist/singer Joe Gittleman and was met by some critical acclaim 'Gittleman's a stone cold poet." --Heidi Siegmund Cuda, L.A. Times, Fox News, The Source. Already a veteran of two of Boston's most revered groups, Gang Green and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, he'd drawn the disc from a collection of solo songs he'd been working on since 1995. But after two years of heavy road work (on the Vans Warped Tour and with Dropkick Murphys, the Alkaline Trio, and many others) and one harrowing brush with tragedy, the newly-solidified lineup ' now a classic power trio with guitarist Miss Amy Griffin, late of Boston rockabilly sensations the Raging Teens, and drummer John Lynch ' is, for the first time, a true, solid, bonded unit. "This band has become the main thing in my life," says Gittleman. "It's gone from a side project and part-time proposition to a full-time discussion. And this time it was much more of a group effort." When Griffin came aboard as a charter touring member back in 2002, her razor-sharp lead guitar and one-woman girl-gang vocal harmonies (imagine Billy Zoom and Exene Cervenka morphed into a single being) immediately meshed with and fleshed out Gittleman's tunes. But on CHOPSTICK BRIDGE Griffin takes a much more prominent role, writing and singing lead vocals on three tunes, while getting a co-writing credit on a handful of the rest. "Writing the songs together, and really being invested in them -- not worrying about fitting the mold of someone else's vision, where you don't want to overstep your bounds, but elevating things to a real group effort -- that was really rewarding." says Griffin. "It's the beginning of something new," Gittleman affirms. "It's the first time that everyone involved in making the record is here, and there's a level of shared ownership that we never had before.

That new outlook is evident on Chopstick Bridge; the disc retains the seasoned punk bite of their debut, but there's also a marked progression evident on such tracks as the pensive, slow-building, Pixies-ish "Next Stop Is the Last Stop," the four-tracked country tune "Airplane" (a solo Amy joint), and "A Lot Like This," a song in such a classic mode that it somehow manages to evoke a Cure-like somberness at the same time it summons the defiance and helplessness of Sid Vicious's version of "My Way." And even on the disc's most powerful, adrenaline-charged rockers, there's an intricate interplay that highlights melody over mere brawn. "So much of that is Amy's guitar playing," says Gittleman. "She made the songs more interesting. She's a great guitarist, and I lack those skills. It was fun to work with someone who sees things so differently than I do." The result is an album in the tradition of the raucous, unsafe-at-any-speed blitzkrieg pop of Husker Du and the Replacements.