live @ 930 Club 9.29.2000
“We’re from California. We spell that T-S-A-R!” shouted Tsar frontman Jeff Whalen from the stage of the 930 Club Friday night, where the Hollywood quartet sped through 30 minutes of hook-laden power pop tempered with just the right amount of glam-rock glitter.
Tsar’s self-titled album is one of this year’s strongest debuts, an engagingly tuneful confection whipped up from sources like Cheap Trick, Sweet and the teenage brevity of the Undertones, all wrapped in the Raspberries’ “Go All the Way”. Main songwriter Whalen led the ballroom blitz, from the opening “Calling All Destroyers” to the T. Rex-isms of “Silver Shifter” to the snappy “Kathy Fong is the Bomb” (“she’s gonna cause a teen riot!”), his power chording rhythm guitar setting up Daniel Kern’s appropriately histrionic lead lines.
Many of the high-school age kids in attendance ---Tsar was billed third to Marvelous 3 and SR-71 --- may not have grasped the strains of glam-rock sendup in songs like “The Teen Wizards”, in which Whalen wails “Teen wizards/of tomorrow/rock city/on the radio/everybody’s/gonna follow”, but they had no trouble understanding Tsar’s revved-up version of the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger Than Life”.
The California boys only stumble was the soggy power ballad “Ordinary Gurl”, which slowed their momentum, but the angsty “I Don’t Wanna Break Up” closed the set and restored Tsar’s buzz. As long as Whalen and Co. hold fast to their grasp of the whimsical aspects of mid-70’s power pop AND the brevity that makes it so listenable, it won’t be long before Tsar will be living the headlining rock-star style they so brightly evoke.
Washington Post, September 2000
