Roll The Tanks may be the most ambitious band in LA. In a scene with bands on every corner, the Tanks guys set out to get the world to notice their Replacements-y, Kinks influenced rock and roll sound by building a studio in a garage by hand, where they aimed their sights on making a big unapologetic rock record. These are the first two tracks from those sessions.
The single’s title track, Goodnight Jimmy Lee is a reckless, ball busting ode to fallen rocker Jay Reatard that sounds like it could have been written by Paul Westerberg, and the b-side, Pistolero, is a Lemonheads-y uptempo acoustic-tinged jam that recalls the heyday of 90’s indie rock. As if these influences weren’t unimpeachable enough, the cover of the 7” is Scratch n’ Sniff! Talk about form meets function!
Keep your eye out for their full-length album, Broke Til Midnight, out next year.

“…Listeners will be able to feel the electricity radiate off the band as the namesake song of this seven-inch explodes out of speakers and makes an immediate run for their hearts. With vintage shades of new wave and nervous indie punk energy to spare, singer/guitarist Danny Carney, bassist Mikey Wakeham and drummer Joe Sirois skitter and quake through a chord progression that could have been an underground hit in the Eighties as sure as it could be now (read: it could be timeless, with the right opportunity), and will make those of the right mind stop dead in their tracks and take notice – it’s just that striking. The lyrics are the sort of romantic and excited brilliance that made gods of The Replacements and The Beatles (scan “First time I heard you felt like I heard me/ My mom called, said I’m in magazines”), but but are also vague enough to let listeners take them home and make them mean whatever they like; the beauty of “Goodnight Jimmy Lee” is that it’s impossible to say what exactly the song is supposed to be about (Danny Carney may know, he wrote it), but it doesn’t really matter because the melody is just sticky enough to get caught in the ears of anyone who catches it and the scruffy-electric guitars play like a call to arms. “Goodnight Jimmy Lee” is the sort of song that will make fans of many, but the single’s B-side, “Pistolero,” is Roll The Tanks’ secret weapon that will win the hearts the A-side ran for. Dialing back the electricity and picking up acoustic guitars (for the rhythm figure, anyway), the members of Roll The Tanks let their guards down and show listeners that their hearts are really on their sleeves. It becomes plain right away in this doomed love story that no one is fooling anyone (from the very first lines: “I lay awake, you have a cig/ You won’t bite, your heart got gone/ Just touch me darlin’ I’m your man remember/ You went out a saint, you came back in a state – just not worth it. Crush me darlin’, I’m insulted.”) but the words to end the love affair haven’t been uttered yet in this relationship, so it continues joylessly. Listeners will begin to feel for the singer as the heart-wrenching continues and, when he wryly mimics The Beatles’ laughter from “Life Goes On,”it begins to feel splendidly hollow in the end…” — Bill Adams/Ground Control Magazine