The Billionaires – Really Real For Forever

The Billionaires – Really Real For Forever / 2007 Self / 10 Tracks / http://www.myspace.com/billionairesband /

Anyone that knows me knows that I usually just get rid of about 99% of the CDs that I review for the zine. We just get way too many, and I have no room for a vast majority of the ones we receive (also, most of them suck). However, The Billionaires make an album in “Really Real For Forever” that I actually want to hang onto. The band does a blend of retro music (Stripes, Strokes, etc) with The Polyphonic Spree and even throw in a little bit of Matt & Kim and Hellogoodbye into a feelgood, dance-worthy and always catchy brand of rock music. “The End of Summer Song” should, in a perfect world, be rocketing up rotation right now. The same constellation of forces continue during “Highschool High”, but the ultimate sound of the track is incredibly different.

The slower tempo of “Highschool High” gradually speeds up into something comparable to “The End of Summer Song”. However, “Highschool High” has a much more organic feel to it than did “The End of Summer Song”. If I could make a bold comparison, it feels as if The Billionaires removed all the distortion from the Tears For Fears and Psychedelic Furs discographies and united that result with works of The Anniversary. “Eighties Movies” is another track that continues with a slower tempo, but The Billionaires add some new influences to the mix. This means that the track has a little bit of a “Suzanne”-era Weezer present, even if the vocals are significantly more intricate than anything that Weezer could ever dream up. Each of the tracks on “Really Real For Forever” could break it big on any (non-country / religious) radio station in the United States, and hopefully this March release will have that sort of future. The fact that the band takes up all the successes made in the last forty years of rock music and combine it into one eclectic sound is perhaps the strongest part of The Billionaires.

With a lush production that never constricts the act, the resulting album bounces back from seventies rock to nineties alternative and even a little bit of new-folk music. At the end of it all, it never feels as if The Billionaires are a band that are struggling to establish their own sound. Like Family Guy links together pop culture, The Billionaires craft all sorts of musical genres into a cohesive, unique sound. Pick this up.

Top Tracks: Butterflies, Pass The Bottles

Rating: 8.5/10