The Callouts ‘Check Your Friends’ Review in Motif Magazine
The Callouts – Check Your Friends (75orLess Records)
It has been a few years since the demise of local pop-punk stalwarts The Jesse Minute. From those ashes we now have The Callouts with Missa Hills on vocals and guitarists Drew Safs and Mike Grillo from The Jesse Minute joining forces with local master beat master Dan Ulmschneider and Drew on bass. The Callouts’ debut, Check Your Friends comes firing out of the cannon with a blast of pop-punk with cuts like “Blue Letter” and the anthemic “Go All Out.” The combination of Hills’ sugary vocals and the loud guitars over a fast backbeat make comparisons to The Jesse Minute inevitable as Check Your Friends does start out like the band’s lost album. The more one dives into Check Your Friends the more The Callouts start to break free from the sound of their former band. Cuts like “Cannonball” and my favorite cut “Nothing Left” remind me more of a lost Letter to Cleo track than The Jesse Minute. The Callouts really start to drop the hammer on tracks like “Partly Not” and “We Were Kids,” which have a heavier rock ‘n’ roll thump, almost in the in the vein of Foo Fighters hooks. On Check Your Friends, The Callouts succeed in avoiding the trappings of being The Jesse Minute part 2 to expand into the future.