Five on Green by Restraining Order

If you act fast, you just might be rewarded with a collector's edition RO toothbrush.

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REVIEWS:

Restraining Orders latest effort "Five on Green" starts right off upbeat with "Be with Me" and it has nice guitar overdub - with enough Sax to match - it has a neat hook - a background vocal which at first startling kind of

rounds out the song in a funked out, unsynthed Thomas Dolby "she blinded me with science" feel. The singer is almost daring this unnamed to "be with him" in a

somewhat cocky way but yet there also seems to be an underlying desperate cry for this persons affection. Nice beginning, got my toe tapping.

Next up is "My Girl won't recycle" - I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak of this song before getting the full CD - written by Drummer Steve Spatucci this is clearly the rocker on the CD. One may make the mistake of looking too

deep into the lyrics of this song, yours truly made that mistake, thinking that "my girl won't recycle" was a clever analogy to a girl you once were with and wouldn't take you back. However take another listen and you'll see this is a

Literal song about a girl who seems PC on every level but for some unknown reason just wont recycle dammit! Perhaps out of laziness, perhaps we'll never know. The best thing about taking the literal interpretation is that you can

just get down with your bad self and enjoy this rocker and not have to worry a about lost love or the environment for that matter.

After what should be the "single" from 5onG you always think you might get "filler" but not here, with "to be discarded" RO starts this nifty angst filled song with some marching snare beats and a nifty uptempo pop melody,

once again juxtaposing sadness of a loss of love with some anger filled 'why me' type melancholy. RO sums this song up with a manic Sax solo that make you think of

your world spinning out of control after being discarded, clearly this love wont be 'recycled'.

On to song 4 of 5onG written by Phil - the man with "radio friendly metal on the hi-fi" we have here a real original song if nothing else. Apparently about loyalty to some degree or the lack thereof and about perhaps regardless

of how many CD's sold or how many show up to never give up the "fantasy" as Phil calls it - however more expounding on what the fantasy is and less about hygiene may have been in order, all that I know is that I feel like I need a bath,

this song made me feel dirty. A guitar solo would have been nice addition also, but I think I could missing the point overall. A few more listens may be in order.

Last, but not least, RO ends 5onG with "Trees" - I can't say enough about this song, this is musically the Class of the CD, this is clearly RO's Stairway to Heaven, if there could be such a comparison, it demands multiple listens.

The acoustic guitar sounds lovely with the sax picking up in just the right places with beautiful notes that harmonize with the songs lyrics, the CD ends up

on a positive note, it begs us to keep reaching no matter how tall the mountain to climb, or branch on a tree.

Overall this CD in 5 short songs takes us on a journey, like a ship over the ocean of waves of good times and bad, RO keeps it real and keeps it real fun and that's the point. A celebration of life, music and things we can

all relate too, even if lavendar soap and candles are not your thing.

***1/2 out of ****

Chris Keenan

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