Buffalo Tom – Skins – Scrawny Records – SCR00001 - ***

In the mid-Eighties, Boston's plaid-shirt romantics Buffalo Tom tried to cross the hardcore rush of Hüsker Dü with the parking-lot pot haze of the Seventies bands their elder brothers grew up on, and sadly the awkward frisson this ungainly pairing produced has been resolved, perhaps a little too politely, since the trio returned from a decade's hiatus. Front-man Bill Janovitz is now a middle aged estate agent, so Buffalo Tom's latest album of surging semi-acoustic balladry is hardly a matter of life or death. Nevertheless, as those suspended folk rock chords tumble over tales of everyday trauma, you might still find you're still smitten.

(6/3/11)