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Hardwell Close

A couple weeks ago I finally cracked open a bag of Great Value Red Curry flavored potato chips ("free from artificial flavours and colours" [""Inspired by Thailand""]) that had been in the salty cellar for a minute. Looking at the notes I took on my phone I was initially confused..what the what is rushed chips?...Ohhhh, ridged chips. Standard 2mm+/- ridges (wavy lays esque if you may). They were uniformly off-white with few traces of skins and virtually no well cooked chips. The crunch was fairly light for ridged chips, almost a standard non-ridged chip crunch, which was quite surprising. Now lets rewind for a minute, at first whiff, it was curry (who would have thought eh?). The tasted like...drum-roll please..red curry. Not very spicy with hints of sweetness that was mostly present in the aftertaste. The kick that was present was slightly less than your standard jalap chip seasoning. The seasoning was fairly well distributed throughout the bag. All in all a pretty good chip, I'd place it in the sweet bbq family. (Great Value seems to be coming after the PC chip market with great price point and a good selection of slightly different than the norm flavours).

So The Murderburgers come up on this salty blog here and there. So it should go without saying that I quite enjoy this Scottish(ish [I believe the only consistent member of The Murderburgers is Fraser who's joined by people from anywhere between the UK and USA and his touring band always seems to change]) pop punk band. Fraser writes catchy (pop) punk that's mid to up tempo with some good melodies, great harmonies..and absolutely depressing lyrics (and he writes a lot of them [there has to be about 50% or more lyrics than your standard 35 minute pop punk album]). While I was reading the lyrics to their most recent album What A Mess (March 2019) I was starting to get seriously concerned for Fraser's well being until the last song, The Thing That Helps Me Survive, in which there are only three lines, "You need to let some things die, So that you can stay alive (I want to stay alive)". Although this isn't exactly the most happy sentiment, it's in stark contrast to a lot of the suicidal imagery in the previous 13 songs (don't get me wrong, Fraser writes clever lyrics and there is some dark humor, but it's still pretty dark). I love albums that can juxtapose dark lyrical imagery with poppy energetic music and What A Mess is not the exception. Great album, if you've ever listened to The Murderburgers you're gonna be into it. If you're into midwestern pop punk, you're gonna be into it. Go check it out.

stay hydrated,
marc   

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