Slide into First Gear
Don't feel bad if DRIV3R triggers no drive within you early. DRIV3R is an Atari game for PlayStation and XBox, and a nationwide online film.

Fittingly, this early music can only be enjoyed while distracted. It's a tour around familiar streets, and gives a chance to get your bearings.

The early milepost songs prove why a bunch of unknown bands are unproven. Mellowdrone, cool name, but the song "C'mon and Try" emphasizes the drone. It establishes the background, that niggling ping that you can't shake and which, until you really focus, disturbs your peace. The engine roar to come overwhelms it, though.

Early on, I thought the best thing about the album was the liner notes, and the mini-bios from the bands about themselves and their songs. From SLO-MO:
"The boy from the city is operating with an overload of information. He's got wide-boy swagger, drawling the sharp lyrics of a tragi-comic story: samba beat, bongos and fuzz guitars. it's a sound oscillating between laid-back and stamping all over you."

Phantom Planets "Big Brat" stopped me reading the CD notes.

As the boom-crash electric drums play, eyes open wide. It means you've stopped tapping your fingers on the steering wheel to your own beat. You've turned the stereo on — just warming up your woofers — and pulled off the featureless highway for a drive along a coast-hugging road.

Second Gear
Sharp turns ahead.

Before I looked to see who the song was by I was reminded of The Sisters of Mercy, and The Cult. It was "Gimme Danger" from Iggy Pop & The Stooges, circa 1973. Yeah, sometimes you have to reach back to figure out what was ahead of its time.

Sparks shoot out of Iggy's scratchy throat. The credibility rises a notch and crackles. Pop voices the wish of any gear head — "Gimme Power." More. More: "Gimme Danger, little stranger. I feel your disease."

Third Gear
SLO-MO's "Boy From the City" is when you realize your tank is full and you're headed cross country, Cannonball Run style (the original, with David "Kung Fu" Carradine, not Burt Reynold's oil slick of a film).

Clearly the album is designed for the teenager who's idea of musical nirvana and rock band ream is a star spot on the soundtrack of a video game, or as only a slightly less alternative, the "house band" on Carson Daly's Last Call TV show.

That is, if that house band gig can be done from inside a car, preferably languishing in bucket seats.

Fourth Gear
With voice overs in between, it reminded me of the segues in David Bowie's Outside album (though not quite as as the voice overs on "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)." There's a very Bowiesque feel to the entire album, as well as a cross-generational feel.