"Continuing to sound just as fresh as they did when the band first formed 40 years ago": Buffalo Tom maintain their haunted, bluesy groove on Jump Rope

Album number 10, and still loving mid-America rock

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Buffalo Tom: Jump Rope album art
(Image: © Scrawny)

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I lost track of Buffalo Tom some time around their fifth album Sleepy Eyed (1995) – the very apotheosis of sincere, heart-tugging college rock. 

Although, to be fair, this lovable Boston three-piece did take a lengthy hiatus a couple of years later, returning with all original members in 2007 just as passionate, unassuming and in love with the mid-America rock of The Replacements and the Rolling Stones as before. 

Jump Rope is their tenth, and is chock-full of their trademark bittersweet harmonies and hooks, Bill Janovitz’s voice certainly benefitting from the passage of time in its richness and sweep. 

Place tracks such as the two singles Helmet and the chiming, circular New Girl Singing alongside recent offerings from Teenage Fanclub and old comrade-in-arms J Mascis, and praise Westerberg that bands like Buffalo Tom in their haunted, bluesy groove continue to sound just as fresh as they did when the band first formed 40 years ago.

Everett True
Everett True

Everett True started life as The Legend!, publishing the fanzine of that name and contributing to NME. Subsequently he wrote for some years for Melody Maker, for whom he wrote seminal pieces about Nirvana and others. He was the co-founder with photographer Steve Gullick of Careless Talk Costs Lives, a deliberately short-lived publication designed to be the antidote to the established UK music magazines.