Lock and Key is a Boston based band that plays a style of post-punk rock much akin to bands such as Hot Water Music, Small Brown Bike, and Against Me!. While those comparisons are fairly accurate i feel that Lock and Key merit their own corner of said style and bands of that ilk. Melodic songs with gruff, hoarse vocals abound on this, their debut full length which followed an EP and a few compilation appearances. Also I’ve just recently learned that although the band called it quits, they are releasing a final 14 track full length on Get A Life Recordings, which i have not yet been able to track down. But if the tracks on the band’s MySpace are any kind of indicator, then it’s sure to be a barnburner of a record.

Here is what some people have said about Pull Up The Floorboards:

“Lock And Key can dish the intensity, but this rampaging act also has a heady dash of hope in its music. Their intense new album, Pull Up the Floorboards, bristles with a punk drive, yet the hope is never far away. Ryan Shanahan has a barking voice that could peel paint, but the group also has a promising melodic sense amid the locomotive rhythms. Lock And Key is one of the hot Boston bands to watch in 2005!” – Boston Globe

“It takes a band like Lock And Key to remind me why I loved this type of music so much in the first place. On Pull Up The Floorboards, Ryan Shanahan’s hoarse voice, when singing, is gruff and when screaming, impassioned. The instrumentation is loud and intense, taking a page from the band’s heroes like Hot Water Music and Fugazi, incorporating emo and post-hardcore into a vicious blend of pounding rhythms, driving yet melodic guitars and vicious intensity. It’s the way emo used to sound: pure urgency and powerful guitars and rhythm. Pull Up The Floorboards is a great record, well produced and well played. It reminds me of a style that never really died out.” – Delusions Of Adequacy

“Pull Up The Floorboards from Lock And Key delivers on the promise of No Fate by stripping down music to post-hardcore basics. Although the term ‘emo’ has been so casually applied that it’s basically useless anymore, Pull Up The Floorboards reminds listeners of what the term meant in its earliest incarnation. Lock And Key is influenced by echoes of Fugazi, Hot Water Music and to a lesser extent Sunny Day Real Estate, but the key factor is that the quartet do this sort of thing really really well. Ryan Shanahan has the gruff, barking vocals, and he and second guitarist Mike Vera rarely succumb to the sort of lockstep unison riffage that weighs down so many albums of this type. Songs like The Process Of Molting are passionate without the irritating affectations that dogs so many less mature bands.” – All Music Guide

Download Pull Up The Floorboards