Music Review – Destroy Nate Allen ” With Our Powers Combined”

Destroy Nate Allen members are:

Nate Allen – Vocals, guitar

Tessa Allen – Vocals, tamborine

Destroy Nate Allen – “With Our Powers Combined”

Nate and Tessa are like that lovable “different” couple that lives down the street, the one’s that can’t help but put a smile on your face whenever you talk to them, and this persona comes through on their latest folk punk effort, With Our Powers Combined.

The record spans across several genres of indie music, which isn’t suprising considering that Gnarboots were the backing band on this album (see Gnarboots A.L.B.U.M. review here). “We have a blast traveling together and playing rock n’ roll, but we’ve had trouble capturing our live energy so we asked our friends for help,” stated Nate. “We flew to the Bay Area and tracked fifteen songs in three days. We were able bring in a horn section (SKA!!!!) to pull off wild concepts that went beyond the scope of our traditional stripped down approach. We are proud of the album and we can’t wait to show everyone!”

The duet vocals of Nate and Tessa are vaguely reminencint of early B52’s but with a more personal view that comes through in the lyrics on songs like “Our First Apartment (Ghetto)” with lines like “The carpet is strained with things we can’t explain”.

With Our Powers Combined starts with a jagged “Waking Up is Hard To Do” followed by a country punkish number “Emergency”, and continues with other songs such as the Ska like “Distracted Nate-O-Bot”.  The quarky lyrics such as “If you want a real relationship you won’t get far” in “Boobie Bar” adds a fun factor to this record that makes it infectiously happy and a high propensity to sing along with the songs.

With Our Powers Combined does for Destory Nate Allen what Knife Man did for Andrew Jackson Jihad  – it gave the band and their songs a whole new area for expansion by adding drums and other instruments.  The album will be released on June 5, but you can preorder here.

Favorite songs : “Our First Apartment (Ghetto)”, “Long Weekend Blues”, “We Occasionally Talk on the Internet”

About Destroy Nate Allen:

Since 2007, married couple Nate and Tessa Allen joined forces as “Destroy Nate Allen” an interactive, sing-a-long, folk punk band. In these five years, they have set foot in forty-eight states, released six full length albums, and played over 700 shows. Their process has allowed them to do (almost) everything in their power to show people a good time with simply two voices and a guitar.