Review - Rubbing Doesn't Help
The Guide To New Music
CMJ - June 1996 - Number 34

by M. Tye Comer

Magnapop certainly isn't the first group of jaded musicians to find the world disenchanting. The Georgia quartet's second full-length release, Rubbing Doesn't Help, is a brisk, poppy, guitar-driven strut through a familiar field of disheveled dreams, lost hope, and life's other little annoyances. But rather than plummeting down the chasm of woe, vocalist Linda Hopper has developed a numbness to the pain, expressed through the nonchalant tone of her mostly speak-in-tune vocals. Even while she's swirling in the bouncy energetic riffs of "This Family", "Hold You Down", and "Juicy Fruit", her voice adds an aftertaste of exhaustion to otherwise vivacious tunes. While the band's approach is initially successful -- "Come On Inside" and the smoldering "Firebrand" are two of Magnapop's most inspired songs to date -- you begin wishing for the emotional release that Hopper's lyrics so desparately crave. That need is only fulfilled with the album's secret, untitled track -- a sluggish, somber tune of emphatic pleading, impacted by a hoarse weariness in Hopper's voice, the kind that only comes after crying or screaming too hard for too long. It may take a while to get there, but this cathartic imprint proves to be the band's most genuine and effective statement.