Motorbike : Kick It Over
Kick It Over, the sophomore album by Cincinnati punks Motorbike, opens with rubber burning on the road, the landscape buzzing by in a blur and beads of sweat gleaming beneath a scorching sun. That opening track, “Scrap Heap,” is all lowlife scuzz, grease and grime at high speeds, captured in two minutes of chugging power chords and a persistent snap of snare. It sounds, frankly, exactly like what you’d expect a band called Motorbike to sound like—denim, leather, motor oil and mayhem.
Motorbike lean heavy on the two-wheel imagery, both of their albums to date adorned by an illustration of a hooligan on a hog. But Motorbike evoke the feeling of blasting down an empty highway more than explicitly stating it, their three-chord rippers rooted more in the proto-punk chaos of MC5 and The Stooges than any of their contemporary descendants (for that matter, the inner groove vinyl etching of Kick It Over reads “ZZ FLOP”). Or, put another way, Motorbike arrive at punk simply by distilling rock ‘n’ roll down to its rawest and most potent elements.
It doesn’t take long for that lean, direct and raw take on punk rock to reveal the depth of Motorbike’s abilities. Much as “Search and Destroy” transitioned into “Gimme Danger” on Raw Power, “Scrap Heap” gives way to the melancholy, regret and roar of “Currency.” Jamie Morrison sneers howls of down-and-out desperation (“All my currency has been used up/My plastic legacy has turned to dust“) against minor key arpeggios and muscular leads from guitarists Philip Valois and Dakota Carlyle—the latter of whom is also a member of The Serfs along with Dylan McCartney, the band’s other vocalist. The bad times keep on rolling with “Cold Sweat,” whose tambourine shake and psychedelic swirl provides a hypnotic backdrop for Morrison’s bark that “it’s a lovely day for a hurricane.”
While Motorbike can effortlessly deliver a two-minute power-chord punch—be it on the Jam-influences mod-punk jangler about dodging bullets on “Scared of Guns” or the Polish-sung oddity “Nie Wrócimy”—it’s in the wilder detours and druggy sprawl of their songs like “Gears Never Dry,” its perpetual wind-up phase pulsing toward cosmic oblivion, where Kick It Over showcases some of the best of what contemporary punk can be. The illusion of order descends into a Fun House inferno on the bluesy stomp of “Western Front,” while the infectiously upbeat “Quite Nice” finds Morrison confronting his own personal Snake River Canyon: “If there’s no hope then I won’t make that jump tonight.” But even when weighed down with regret, as on the triumphant closer “What Have I Done,” there’s always a feeling of escape and liberation, that maybe no matter how bad as it gets, the hum of the open road can set you free.
Label: Feel It
Year: 2025
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