Modern Day Moonshine

Album: Same Old Fight (2007)

Artist: Modern Day Moonshine

Label: self-released

Where available/price: At live shows for $8, or order it online from myspace.com/moderndaymoonshine for $8.

Songs: 1) Intro 2) Such a Shame 3) Unite 4) Reminiscin’ 5) Can’t Keep Pretending 6) The Next Station 7) Spirits 8) Interlude 9) Stranded 10) Rescue Me 11) Addicted 12) Some People 13) Prisoner

Band: Todd Goodnough (vocals, guitar), Brendan McCaskey (bass), David Burrows (drums)

Website: moderndaymoonshine.com

Extra info: Modern Day Moonshine is scheduled to play Gallagher’s Pub in Ocean Beach on March 28.

Content to express themselves through lyrics alone, Modern Day Moonshine plinks along with the same old beach rhythm and plucky chords that washed up in the Kingston dancehalls after the rock-steady era. The same beachy tones play every beer stage on every Wednesday and Saturday night from Garnet to Newport. To say the band is “similar” to other local reggae bands would be misleading; they are identical.

Except for the oblique storyline in track six (“The Next Station”), the lyrics mostly rely on time-honored island motifs of “problems with the world.” It’s the Jamaican “fix the world” complex we all recognize. (Speaking of Jamaican, don’t tell Goodnough he’s from Buffalo, New York. Apparently, some sort of accident has left him with the belief he must sing in a Caribbean accent.)

The band’s dedication to the bland, surface, and unoriginal belies their talents. Moonshine moves through each song with facile grace, a sign they are too skilled for what they produce.

I’ve written it in this column before, and I still believe it: there’s beer to be drunk and women who need live dancing music in P.B. There’s nothing wrong with being that band. It’s fun. Until they realize how good they are, Modern Day Moonshine fulfills that need.