A rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, New Medicine (Jake Scherer, Dan Garland, Matt Brady, Ryan Guanzon) formed in 2009 and released their debut full length album, Race You To The Bottom, in September 2010. The band has toured with Halestorm, Hollywood Undead, Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold, and performed at Uproar Festival, Rock the Rapids, and Rocklahoma.
In a little over two years, the band has gone from a few uploaded videos and a handful of amateur recordings of live performances on YouTube to having music videos for nearly half their songs; I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the band has been able to amass a great fan base. The band has an amazingly devoted fan base who will share this band with anyone to get their music out there and a label who took 3OH!3 from obscurity and turned them into a worldwide phenom. This band is, hopefully, only one album away from achieving the fame and recognition which they deserve.
"Laid" is the best opening song, for the album, which the band could have used. It's awful, but really fantastic. It's also one of the best songs to run to (especially if you're really pissed off) ever.
If you can listen to, or watch the video for, "Rich Kids" and not love how weird, gritty, and wonderfully honest the band is, you probably should not bother yourself with reading the rest of this post (watch the music video; it will make the band that much more amazing). The band is great, and the fact that an awesome song like this heads straight into "Little Sister" only makes the band that much more amazing. The song ("Little Sister") is just amazing. It's put together perfectly and shows how great the band is at being heartbreaking-ly honest while maintaining that gritty outer core that is so central to the rock genre. The repetition of "do your wings fit good" never fails to rip at my heart, but it's so fantastic at the same time that it makes it possible to listen to again without getting too upset by this perfectly amazing song.
"End of the World" is such a great song. It would be a great concert song with lines like "let's go crazy, everybody let go," "someone give me something I can scream out loud," or "party till the end of the world". The song is just so upbeat while maintaining that main set of guitar riffs that is so imperative to the heart of a rock song.
"Baby's Gone" does not sound like the name of a great song and if you listen to it superficially (focusing on the name and the main refrain) the song sounds a little unnecessary, but if you listen to the entire thing and actually pay attention to the lyrics, the song is kind of great. On the other hand, "Resolve to Fight," is just great. I mean, the only way I can truly define how I feel about it is from my short hand note which simply read "fucking awesome"; and it is, undoubtedly, that.
"Never Heard" is a great song, from the first drum beat to the last guitar riff. The composition is perfect and the lyrics are put together so thoughtfully that I cannot get enough of the song. Scherer appears to get the bands point across so easily, with the way he can spit out lyrics at the same time he is pouring out his heart to the listener. If the composition and the other lyrics did not make me like the song, then the line "I don't want to feel these things for you" makes me love the song.
"American Wasted" sounds just like you would expect it to, but does that make it any less fun to listen to. It sounds like a fantastic '80's rock song and, regardless of your personal taste, most everyone can listen to, and appreciate, that era of rock. The same thing goes for "Race You to the Bottom". I do love the fact that a rock song employs the phrase "hell's bells," but it's not quite as terrific as the other songs, whose lyrics are just a little more heartfelt and thoughtful.
Immediately after this, slightly ridiculous, song is "It's A War," and this song is too great to be shoved in towards the end of the album. The band has this amazing ability to produce these great meanings and lyrics in each of their songs, and this song is the prime example of the band's skills. Of course, the switch up from the beat of the guitar to the addition of the piano into the middle of the song only makes it that much better before it dissolves into the rock guitar riffs and back beats as the song draws to a, slightly discordant, end.
"Sun Goes Down" is one of my favorite songs; not just by New Medicine, but one of my favorites, period. It's simply an amazing song from "I don't know where to start, I keep falling apart" to "my eyes are blind and all I see, is how the world just laughs at me". The entire song is fantastic from that opening guitar to the simple beat that follows it the entire length of the song; and not one of those lyrics can be described as anything less than perfect. It's an amazing song and deserves so much more attention than it has received. You might not expect a band like this to have great lyrics, but every song on the album is better written and put together than the last and, the fact that this song is the last on the album (if you do not have the 'deluxe version') only proves this point.
You should get the deluxe version of the album though, that way you can listen to "The Takeover," on repeat. It's a surprisingly fantastic song and I cannot imagine how anyone decided that it should not have made the original album cut. There is no band I would love to see live more than this band, if only to hear/see the band perform "The Takeover" and "Sun Goes Down".
"We Are the Fire" is just a great rock song; each of their 'bonus tracks' is amazing enough that it should have made it onto the bands album to begin with. The song is put together so greatly, beginning with a great guitar riff (that almost sounds reminiscent of Mellencamp era country, turned into rock), to lines like "shut up, get up, wake up", before dissolving into the "whoa's" and the wails of the band that try to follow that last guitar strum out of the song; it's great.
"Amen" is a classic rock song that sounds like it could have been produced sometime as the '80's were crossing into the '90's, much like "Race You to the Bottom" and "American Wasted". Not my favorite sound, but I can still appreciate it for its composition and the everlasting quality of that classic rock sound.
"Love You Now" is a great way to end the album. It is just as amazing as "Never Heard" and "Sun Goes Down" and there is absolutely no reason that it should be as little known as it is. With a great rock sound, throughout, and lyrics like "I wish I would have known a little more when I was younger, would I have been the man I am today" and "I didn't wanna love you now" the song is too great to not know, or to not listen to on repeat.
Each song on Race You To The Bottom is better than the last and the band is so gritty and honest that they're great. The band is able to slide so easily from one rock sub genre to the next without missing a beat in their great compositions; and each song, no matter the sound or atmosphere, has lyrics which have been put together perfectly. Buy their album (the 'deluxe' version), it is more than worth it and is one of the few albums that get better the more you listen to them. They are so amazing, I cannot believe that it has been two full years since this album came out and they are not yet famous; they need to be.
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