The latest trend of the Downtown music scene is one I’m excited to get behind: dad rock! Recently, Par has made its presence known, and not to be outdone, Moonboots played its EP-release party at the Bunkhouse last Saturday night. Perhaps booker Ryan Pardey describes them better as “old man rock” because these five guys aren’t all dads, but most of them are of the age where they could be sending kids to college.

Speaking of college, Moonboots harkens back to a time before I was in college, the early and mid ’90s. Theirs is the type of music one would hear on some station either at the high or low end of the dial being programmed by music lovers at a local university. As mentioned in a previous Las Vegas Weekly article, the unit began as a Pixies cover band, and the sound of Black Francis, Deal, Lovering and Santiago are all over songs like “Non-Believer” and “Crack,” the latter of which is not on the EP, but should be considered as a single going forward. It’s catchy and had the entire crowd, much of which was adorned in Moonboots T-shirts, singing.

Lead singer John Coulter, who describes his ideal sound as, “Loud wall of soundish, not super shoegazey” mentions many other influences. He knows Moonboots often get compared to Pinkerton-era Weezer (just listen to “Panama”), but he insists he was more tinged by The Rentals. Guided By Voices, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. also make the list of ’90s alt-radio all-stars that Moonboots has to thank.

The EP was recorded locally, mostly at Naked City Audio, with lead single “The Omen” recorded at 11th Street Records. The band says it’s happy playing locally—Coulter sounds excited about a March 10 Neon Reverb set at the Bunkhouse (set time: 9 p.m.)—he seems to know some of these songs have a chance to break through. Everything old is new again.