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June 20, 2009 Bowery Poetry Club, New York
May 16, 2009 Bowery Poetry Club, New York
May 2, 2009 Performing Arts Center Princeton, NJ
April 18, 2009 Bowery Poetry Club, New York
March 21, 2009 Bowery Poetry Club, New York
Rackett with special guests:
Ménage à Twang
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RACKETT's second full-length CD, RESISTANCE (Scamafone), was launched at 8 o'clock on August 18, 2007, at a free concert in the Community Park Amphitheater, Princeton. Produced by Michael Gregory, RESISTANCE was recorded at Barber Shop Studios in Hopatcong, New Jersey and mastered at DB Plus in New York.
A project like this could easily have been disregarded—a cringeworthy collective midlife crisis—but the band's honesty and Muldoon's witty, literate lyrics have silenced the naysayers. In conversation, Muldoon is measured and calm, each word carefully chosen and considered. While this is in keeping with his status as a poet, it belies an inner exhibitionism and spontaneity familiar to all performers. On stage, Muldoon is animated and exuberant, prowling the lip of the stage with his guitar in the way only a rock'n'roll performer can, living proof that it is an ageless art. Rackett do more than their fair share to encourage energy at the Crescent Arts Centre, prompting a large portion of the crowd to their feet, and even jumping off the stage mid-song to join in the revelry. Their set is long but they keep it tight, adeptly switching from melodic garage rock to brooding ballads, and even to up-tempo reggae. (Steven Rainey, Culture Northern Ireland, September 2007)
With Stephen Allen on keyboards, Bobby Lewis on drums, Lee Matthew on vocals and guitar, Nigel Smith on bass, and Paul Muldoon on guitar, there is a definite post-punk feel to Rackett. But their influences are varied, marrying as they do the apparent opposites of prog-rock and punk. (Kevin Higgins, Galway Advertiser, August 2007)
The Princeton band Rackett-founded in 2004 by two Princeton University professors, Paul Muldoon and Nigel Smith—is what's best about rock and roll. There's energy, passion and the primal need to make a loud noise. Rackett is real rock'n'roll for people who aren't kids. That's kind of rare today. (Chris Jordan, Home News Tribune, August 2007)
Resistance is truly irresistible. (Rachel Marx, Princeton Packet, August 2007)
The music, with its catchy chords and crunchy guitars, comes off as a modern take on late-1970s pub rock, a la early Elvis Costello or a more aggressive version of Squeeze. There are also some elements of blues, punk, reggae and pop mixed in. (Brent Johnson, Trenton Times, August 2007)
The riff that opens the record and begins "Good As It Gets" sounds like garage band heaven, and by the time the most ungarage-like playing in "11 O'Clock" fades away, the celestial hyperbole has been justified. No longer can Rackett be patronized ("professors playing rock—how quaint!") or merely hooked to poet Paul Muldoon's star. This is a strong, self-contained, furiously rocking band that happens to have a phenomenal lyricist. (Stuart Mitchner, Princeton Town Topics, August 2007)
The music is "three-car garage rock" with no pretensions, and Muldoon's lyrics are wonderful. (Richard Sanger, Toronto Star, March 2007)
The lyrics have a cleverness and originality reminiscent at times of Van Morrison, and at others of Gershwin or Cole Porter. (Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine, November 2006)
Perhaps the only garage-rock band in the world with a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet as a member. (The New Yorker, November 2006)
If you were watching and listening to RACKETT at the Berlind Theatre last Friday, and if you could hear what was happening (enlightened lyrics with nasty guitar licks) in spite of the problematic acoustics, you were witness to one more death blow to the caste system of culture. The joy of RACKETT is that these two almost laughably opposite entities-literary academia and 3-car garage band-can not only coexist but do so uninhibitedly, shamelessly. (Stuart Mitchner, Town Topics, December 2005)