Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 
The Brutalist Bricks
Matador Records
March 9
By PJ Decoteau
Ted Leo has made a name for himself as a critical darling and a rocker’s rocker, with a swell of famous fans that includes Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard.
While this is all well and good as a means to playing opening acts for these big-names (which he and his band the Pharmacists have done on numerous occasions), it would be fair to say that the group deserves at least a piece of the fame that has been awarded their peers but has seemed to evade them for a over decade.
It’s a shame that the group’s stellar single “Me and Mia” off of 2004’s Shake the Sheets wasn’t the smash hit that it should’ve been, but with their newest and best outing, The Brutalist Bricks, set to drop next week, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists should be in line to finally reach a wider audience.
As with all Pharmacists albums, Bricks features clean, crisp production of rock songs that range from strumming guitar (“One Polaroid A Day”) to fast and loud (“The Stick”) and everything in between, all surging behind Leo’s literate storytelling and political outrage. It’s all very Rice Krispy (it snaps, crackles, and pops – get it?), so that even songs with lyrics like “Well we all have a job to do, and we all hate God” from album highlight “Woke Up Near Chelsea” never sounds overbearing and always keeps the forward momentum chugging along.
The band clearly pour all of their energy into the songs, all of which dance with the precision of a heavyweight boxer, so that each track dips and ducks and eventually lands a hay-maker square in the chest. Seeing that Ted Leo has been perfecting his brand of indie-punk-rock for ten years now with only one slight misfire (2007’s Living With the Living), it’s about time they earned their title belt as one of the decade’s best rock outfits.
