THE PAYBACKS – “HARDER AND HARDER”

No doubt about it, life is hard.

Fortunately, some things are better when they’re hard. For Detroit rock ‘n’ roll outfit, The Paybacks, it’s best when its “Harder and Harder.”

 It’s with that philosophy that Detroit’s “defenders of the rock,” return with "Harder and Harder," their second album for Get Hip Records. Brimming with the pummeling riff rock, buoyant, revealing pop and three chord punk pounders that defined the band on its much-heralded Get Hip debut, “Knock Loud,”  “Harder and Harder” is testament that cutting your own path through the mediocrity of fad, fashion, creeping hipster-ism and music industry brainwashing is its own reward.

Love for love’s sake, sex for pleasure’s sake, self redemption and the repudiation of those who hunger for your failure – these are all themes, tales and truths that find their way on to “Harder and Harder.” Delivered with the band’s trademark hell-bent optimism, “Harder and Harder” also features guest appearances by founding guitarist and Paybacks patriarch, Marco Delicato (who drops in for two tracks that he co-wrote: “Superider” and “Can You Drive”) and Detroit guitar legend and one of the fathers of the “Sacred Steel” slide guitar style, Calvin Cooke, who joins the band for a blues-by-the-way-of-punk number called “Jumpy.” Engineer and co-producer extraordinaire John Smerek, of Detroit’s famed White Room studios, ties the whole thing together in one magnificent, loud, unruly platter. It’s been a long wait, but it can’t be contained any longer -- “Harder and Harder,” is fixin’ to bust out.