Hi Times

R: So will the Hi-Fives ever be your career?
CI: No way. We might take a year off after the next record and just tour, 'cause we've never done that before and we figure, "Why wait?" We're not getting any younger. But it's a band, y'know? It should be fun. As soon as you make it a career, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. It's your job and you have to stress about paying the bills and rent with it. I think it would deteriorate our whole thing, 'cause we're not really talented as such, we're not like skilled musicians or anything, we don't write especially clever songs; people like us because we're appealing and fun and fast and exciting, but it's kind of silly to think about doing that as a career.

The Hi-Fives are scheduled to perform on Wednesday, July 9, at Hollywood Alley in Mesa, with Pollen, and the Medieval Knievals. Showtime is 9 p.m. (all ages).

Long, Luxurious, Flowing Hair
Rye Coalition, the most elegantly coifed band since Nation of Ulysses, has just released its first full-length LP, Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet. Preaching the gospel of big hair (the first track, "The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God" proclaims "Strength is in the hair/Samson is in the house") and the redemptive value of clean ashtrays, Rye Coalition offers up swanky hard-core enveloped by schizoid vocals that sound like Fugazi's Guy Picciotto crooning after downing a bottle of Brass Monkeys.

The Coalition's album succeeds in showing what the band's seven-inches and EPs couldn't--the band's diversity. "Dressing Up for the Indictment" has troubadour Ralph Cuseglio passionately wailing the tale of being caught sleeping with someone's wife by her husband over a frenetic guitar attack; "Fucking With Beautiful Posture" is a sparse math-rock construction sweatily deriding a "regular Don Juan" for his taste in women; "Iron Fist in Velvet Glove" is a near-epic effort that bleeds sex and rock 'n' roll through its pores like a rawer, naked Girls vs. Boys. Ignore the unintelligible album title; Rye Coalition's LP kicks ass both artistically and as a self-help fashion guide. (Gern Blandsten, P.O. Box 356, River Edge, NJ 07661)

Jersey's Best Dressed
Sticking with the haute couture theme, East Coast hard-core quintet Lifetime just released its first recording in more than a year--the Jersey's Best Dancers LP on indie rock's new home of the hipsters, Delaware's Jade Tree Records. Dripping with Brylcreem and attired in gas-station-chic thrift-store finds, Lifetime generates hook-heavy, melodic hard-core that tugs at your emotions while keeping one middle finger aimed squarely at bourgeois society. Jersey's Best Dancers is an album for all the broken-hearted rebels who need an excuse to jump around.

Lifetime's most brilliant moments come on the heartbreak songs, especially "25 Cent Giraffes" and the album's opener, "Turnpike Gates," where the band appropriates angry emo-boy lyricism and backs it with a blistering wall of up-tempo hard-core. The band also does some punk-rock introspection on "How We Are," "Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show" and "The Verona Kings," reflecting on the downside of playing shows, exchanging awkward glances with girls in the audience, and feeling the general desperation of being in a little hard-core band from the wrong side of the tracks. Everybody knows there are way too many songs about girls and being in bands, but Lifetime pulls it off with a maturity and sincerity that most bands can't touch. (Jade Tree, 2310 Kennwynn Road, Wilmington,