She Eats Planets

http:// - Connecticut Creative

It's Time for Liftoff
By Jonathan Harris

When I was first asked to review the first full-length offering from Connecticut rock band She Eats Planets I couldn't help but wonder about the band's name. Who is she? Why is she eating planets? (Turns out the band has been using those questions to their advantage.) Once the CD arrived in the mail and I dropped it in my CD player, however, I forgot about those questions and wondered why the hell no one knew who She was yet.

Liftoff is a self-produced, 11-track rock and roll party. Beyond party, I almost dare say it's a riot. Following one year after the release of the band's self-titled EP, Lifoff raises the bar and shatters expectations from the first gloriously overdriven guitar chord to the final cymbal crash. She Eats Planets takes Liftoff and goes full-throttle, barely slowing down long enough to slash your tires and break your heart.

Opening with the rocker No Time At All, guitarist Laura Robida drops a classic rock style guitar riff in place, setting the frantic pace of the song while hard-hitting drummer Matt Mello offers a tight drum track full of cymbal crashes and drum fills. Bassist Talya Goodman grooves along underneath this all, creating a full, three-dimensional picture. Once the band has you nodding your head, tapping your toes, and grooving along with the instrumental intro, lead singer Sara Hart opens her mouth and knocks you clear out of your chair and onto the floor. What can I say? The girl can sing! She's pitch perfect and her vocals sound true and raw - fresh from the vocal booth. And if her interview responses are any indication, she did it all without using any studio effects or autotune (Insert standing ovation here!) The track goes over the top with super-shredding by Robida. The solos are simple but performed with such confidence and speed that you forget that she's playing inside the box and just drop your jaw. It's hard to imagine a CD getting better when the band kicks down the door on the first track.

But it does. The band rips through newly recorded versions of their songs All For You and Shut Up (I Love You), both previously released on their EP, and new track Don't Call Me before diving headlong into a souped up version of Pat Benatar's classic hit Heartbreaker. SEP speeds up the track into a bigger rocker, offers bigger drums and (dare I say it?) a better guitar solo. And no one, since Benatar herself, has handled the highs and lows of the vocals better than Hart. Goodman and Robida pair up perfectly on the guitar and bass breakdown making this reviewer wonder if the two are simply that in-sync or if there were multiple takes and a very patient engineeer splicing the takes together. She Eats Planets' version of Heartbreaker should be a hit song, stealing the laurels from its original.

Heartbreaker isn't the only song with hit potential. If I had my way, I'd be sending opener No Time At All to the hit charts along with the poppy-rocker with a great chord-based riff, Music Inside (also previously released on the band's EP). Toss in closing track Old Girlfriend along with Anyone But Me and there's some serious hit potential. Shut Up (I Love You), a blues-rock style track, could also join the ranks if a record label were smart enough to snap up the unsigned band and release Liftoff with a full publicity campaign behind it.

She Eats Planets writes catchy rock and roll songs that could easily be compared to bands like Letters to Cleo (Here and Now, I Want You to Want Me, Dangerous Type), No Doubt (pre-Return of Saturn minus the horns), and The Donnas (post American Teenage Rock and Roll Machine). You could even draw strong comparisons to rock band Damone (Out Here All Night, Frustrated, Everybody Wants You) (Liftoff is a CD you want to play beginning to end and then over again. The weakest tracks on the CD, Push Your Luck and That Girl, are stronger than some of the so-called "hits" currently plaguing the Billboard Top 100. And the strongest tracks, Music Inside, Old Girlfriend, and No Time At All, can't even compare. No one is playing this type of music right now nor have they for quite some time.

Liftoff accomplishes something that very few modern bands have been able to do. They combine classic rock and hard rock rhythms and progressions with danceable basslines and infectious pop vocals. They pulse with a life of their own, threatening to burst from the speakers and into your face.
There's nothing glossy about Liftoff except its artwork (designed by drummer Mello).

Harts vocals grab you and slap you in the face with her ability to snarl, growl, and sing ever so sweetly. Goodmans' bass work takes the task of bass player to a whole new level, finding the missing piece from the song and offering another layer of rhythm to each track. Bass notes be damned, the bass lines in almost every song on Liftoff are interresting and intricate alternate and or complimentary lines, adding an exciting and bold colors to She Eats Planets' already impressive canvas. Robida has clearly been taking notes from bands like Poison, Kiss, Joan Jett, and The Donnas (a band she has frequently and openly called her bigest influence). She puts the hammer down on her guitar parts, playing frantic rhythms that often set the tone for the song and blisters through her guitar solos without so much as glancing over her shoulder. Mello's performance on drums (and cowbell on All For You) is a gem. Not satisfied with simple beats on a stripped down drum kit, the drums on Liftoff are big and bold, playing a spectrum of tones and cymbal splashes and crashes. His timing is steady and yet he maintains the CD's high-energy. He plays with the precision and energy of the best studio drummers around putting the final jewel in the She Eats Planets crown.

Liftoff is a refreshingly original CD from an unknown band. If you're a record label looking to a sign a band with amazing potential, as proven on Liftoff, visit their website www.sheeatsplanets.com.

- Blog of Sound.com

There are a lot of reasons to like She Eats Planets, not least of which is a combination of (mostly) girl-band rock enthusiasm, pop sensibility and whimsicality reminiscent of indie rock bastions Sleater-Kinney, but really? A rocked-out cover of “Kiss the Girl” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” seals the deal. You have to have a hard, desolate heart to listen to that and not fall in love.


— Victor Infante
August 27, 2008 - The Worcester Telegram & Gazette

She Eats Planets is winning over audiences with their catchy songs and high-energy live performances. - ShoreView

"We were already pretty impressed with this pop-punk five-piece out of Connecticut... This group of four girls and one token male are vying for Grand Prize in our Spin Hot Pursuit competition. It proves that not only does this band rock hard, but they also have a head for business! Check them out!" - MusicNation.com

"Smart power-pop, gets right to it..."
- Illinois-based band

"There is a new force in the universe that I don't think anybody's aware of. It's so powerful that the late Carl Sagan, is turning over in his grave right now…. There's a force out there that eats planets. They're gonna be a force to be reckoned with, folks, I'm not kidding you. She Eats Planets."
- Brandon Rothermund

"…(She Eats Planets) are the real thing, we're just a bunch of old-timers"
- South Carolina based band

"Go-Gos meet the Clash. Rockin!"
- Songwriter

"For rock quintet She Eats Planets it's all about rocking hard and energizing audiences...This former all-girl band has taken the local rock scene by storm with their high energy performances and infectious pop-rock tunes. " - ShoreView

The punk-pop genre can be limiting. It abounds with mealy-mouthed brats whose concerns relate specifically to the self-involved world of the teenager. But there is transcendence, bands that create an excitement that reaches a large cross-section of people. These artists can literally get blood pumping faster. The Ramones and The Clash could do this in their sleep. Green Day has proven rather adept overall. And now the residents of Connecticut have a treasure in their midst, the awesomely-named She Eats Planets.
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The band cites influences as diverse as Tool, Rush, Altan, The Donnas, Voltaire, AC/DC and that band The Beatles. She Eats Planets takes their various interests and melts them down into their own clear sound. “Kiss the Girl” shines with the sunny harmony vocals of Robida, Goodman and Dressler while “Shut Up (I Love You)” throws Lita Ford and Nirvana into the same pit.
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Based on a small catalog of songs (but growing all the time), She Eats Planets could become the band everyone claims to have seen when they were just starting out. Last summer, their song “Music Inside” was a finalist in a contest run by Spin. They’re working on finding a record contract and hope to release an official full-length in early 2010. Connecticut, stand up and take notice. - Fairfield County Weekly, New Mass Media