R is for Rocket: ferociously defined, guitar rock bangers”>
Tanner Deutsch
Rocket is a group of childhood friends from Los Angeles who started playing music and making songs together in a shed around 2021. That’s not very long ago, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from their debut album, R is for Rocket, an album of ferociously defined, great guitar rock bangers.
From what I’ve read about them already, people seem to like to compare their music to greats like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine, which sure, what young rock band today striving to make music seriously aren’t influenced by these guys. But harping on these comparisons seems like a disservice to the fuzzy, and genuinely sharp hooky quality of their songs.
When the drums crash in on the second-half of the otherwise mellow opener “The Choice,” some third eye unlocks in my brain. The blazing guitar work that kicks off “One Million” is something that maybe every rock song should have moving forward? “Number One Fan,” the album’s closest thing to a ballad, is dreamy in all the right ways, helped along by a surf of strummed guitars and vocalist Alithea Tuttle’s reverbed lyrics that lap up and loop around like a beach’s ceaseless tide.
Maybe the biggest thing you can tell about Rocket — the band has already opened for The Smashing Pumpkins, Ride, Sunny Day Real Estate and Silversun Pickups — after listening to R is for Rocket is just how devoted they are to the craft, the genre, the pursuit of technically sound and melodically driven music. (The album’s title track is fitted with a luxurious, three-minute jam sesh right in the middle, a bold statement of identity as any.) After every listen, I find new details to appreciate.
