BAND: Superchick

Superchick is a co-ed band that has diverse backgrounds that creates quite the interesting sound. “Pure” you may have heard on this summer’s “The Hills,” LC’s “Laguna Beach” spin-off. In it, one of the female singers starts the single off with a rapid rhyming not unlike Natasha Bedingfield accompanied by a pop beat. What's surprising are the reggae undertones. This single gets a little too repetitive for my taste, but two other songs on their album “Beauty from Pain” caught my ear. First is “Bowling Ball,” which starts off with a sort of guitar drum roll signaling a crescendo, before the drums come in along with an alto echo to a determined female lead. Thus they abandon the reggae and pop beats and head straight into the rock arena for a quirky feminist message:

“You need that boy/like a bowling ball/dropped on your head/which means not at all/you have/too much/to give/to live/to waste your time on him.”

From their instrument play you can tell they spend a lot of time experimenting with different levels, changing the songs rhythm at every turn to signal the feeling of the lyrics, unlike most punk songs that only change it up when they pause for solos. “We Live” returns to the feel of “Pure,” guitar playing, sorrowful background singers and co-ed lead singers in a semi-upbeat reggae/r&b/pop song, with inspirational lyrics like:

“With life we never know/when we’re coming up to the end of the road/so what do we do then/with tragedy around the bend/we live/we love/we forgive/and never give up/cause the days we are given are gifts from above.”

From their lyrics you could probably say they’re what would creatively explode if The Black Eyed Peas and Blink 182 smoked pot, barricaded in a studio with the lead singer of Garbage, Shirley Manson. www.superchickonline.com/ If you like what you hear, they're performing Rochester, NY Oct. 10 at the Live Love Tour.