Skins

All suggest that this band is in the process of remaking itself for a vital midlife. [Mar 2010, p.85]

Nineteen years later the band are in robust health, and Skins makes for an impressive, graceful addition to their catalogue.

Skins is the product of an older and wiser trio than Buffalo Tom were in their salad days, but it's unmistakably the same band, and if their attack and their concerns have changed a bit with the passage of time, that's a reflection of their innate honesty as much as anything else; they simply are who they are, and on Skins that means they're a gifted and grown-up rock & roll band.

What we get with Skins is a mildly pleasant album that's easy on the ears, and is utterly predictable.

They write about what they know. Once that was dashed hopes and broken hearts, now its families and what sounds like pages from a diary. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Alternative rock from the '90s might be much maligned in the current indie-centric music world, but to paraphrase Jon Stewart as he once introduced the band on his '90s talk show: I like good music and this is good music.

Happily, it makes a good go of bucking the trend here and there, with singer Bill Janovitz's full-throated delivery investing his words with the kind of gritty undercurrent of self-loathing and inner torment that makes Skins jolt with bursts of fresh energy.