Screeching Weasel -- Formula 27 (EP)
Monday, June 9, 2008
Formula 27 is easily one of my favorite 7-inch'ers ever. I remember driving to Minneapolis with my roommate, stopping by Extreme Noise, poring over the crates of vinyl, realizing that my finances were rather limited and, ultimately, deciding that if I was going to allow myself to "splurge" on anything, it would be on this four-song EP. I also remember driving my roommate crazy by playing it over and over again on our lone turntable the second we got home.
But that's Screeching Weasel for you. Some people love them, absolutely love every second of the band's music, and other folks . . . well, their taste is impaired.
At any rate, Formula 27 is classic Screeching Weasel. In fact, as a companion to the band's stellar Bark Like a Dog LP, Formula 27 is the last release the band's "classic" Ben Weasel / Danny Vapid / Jughead / Dan Panic lineup would produce. For anyone even cursorily familiar with the midwestern punk scene during the 1990s, this was the lineup that also churned out My Brain Hurts, a cover of the Ramones' first album, Wiggle, and Anthem for a New Tomorrow between 1991 and 1993. And the four tracks on Formula 27 rank right up there with the strongest songs on those seminal albums.
In other words, Formula 27 consists of fast, Ramonsy pop-punk with lyrics about romantic misadventures delivered in Ben Weasel's trademark snotty suburbs-o'-Chicago whine. And it's not that sort of saccharine "If only you knew how great I am, then you'd like me" crap that has brought fame and fortune to certain unnamed guyliner-sporting emo bands. To wit:
Oh yeah I'm getting old and fat and it seems
That everywhere I turn pretty girls just pass me by and stare
right through me
...
Pretty girls oh oh yeah look fresh and bright and pure and so clean
But you know pretty girls oh oh yeah would never associate
with scum like meSeriously, how great would it be if Jimmy Eat World or the Get-Up Kids sang "I'm getting old and fat"? Brilliant, Ben, brilliant.
Highlights:
Track 1. "(Nothing's Gonna) Turn Me Off (Of You)." Growing up, I never really understood the concept of dancing. I mean, I had a vague idea that it involved moving in response to music, but I'd never felt the urge to move. When I first heard the bouncy rhythm of "(Nothing's Gonna) Turn Me Off (Of You)," however, my body began jerking awkwardly and, suddenly, I got it. Of course, I resembled Seinfeld's Elaine Benes. But you get the point. The song hooks you immediately. Additionally, the song contains another of Weasel's lyrical gems: "I'm not as desperate as I probably seem / you really are the girl of some of my dreams."
Track 2. "Pretty Girls Don't Talk to Me." Now that I'm thirty, I am beginning to understand the whole "I'm getting old and fat" thing. Getting to the song, though, this is one of Ben Weasel's finer moments. You've got a bit of the super-melodic lead guitar sound fans will associate with songs like "Guest List," but it doesn't take over the song. Instead, it's a perfect compliment to Weasel's start-again, stop-again vocals. The really great thing about this track, though, is the twenty-five second bridge linking the relatively restrained first two-thirds of the song with the frenetic crescendo.
Track 3. "I Don't Care Anymore." Okay, take the somber mood of the last song and add hand clapping and ivory-tickling to the mix. These sixties throwback stylings work really well, transforming a solid nineties' pop-punk song into something entirely different. Once the oohs and aahs (well, mostly oohs, actually) kick in with about minute left on the track, you've got the punk equivalent of the sort of song you'd find at the end of a high school movie. You know, the song that plays when the reticent kid gets to dance with the apple of his or her eye. Only this is actually good.
Track 4. "Why'd You Have to Leave?"All right, now take the hand clapping and ooh-aahing from the last song and add the bounce of the first track. Enjoy.
Sobriquet Grade: 90 (A-)
Labels: A-minus records, midwestern punk, pop-punk, Screeching Weasel, Sobriquet 43
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Gaslight Anthem -- Senor and the Queen (EP)
Monday, May 12, 2008
One of the things I've always loved about punk rock is the pleasingly anachronistic tendency many bands have to release 7" singles and EPs in an era defined by CDs and digital downloads. Of course, you can find EPs like the Gaslight Anthem's
Senor and the Queen on iTunes and other digital download sites, but there's something altogether charming in knowing that the 7" release of this record is out there and that it will probably end up in the kick-ass jukebox at the Triple Rock.
Let me just say that, as someone hailing from New Jersey, I've grown accustomed to hearing all sorts of inaccurate crap about the Garden State and describing anything as "New Jersey" is liable to be misunderstood as a negative assessment. So I am going to make this crystal-clear: describing the Gaslight Anthem as the most thoroughly New Jersey band I've heard in a long, long time is a good thing. A really good thing.
Okay? Got that?
It's no secret that after Bruce Springsteen saw the Ramones in Asbury Park, he went home and wrote "Hungry Heart" for the Forest Hills legends. Of course, Jon Landau convinced the Boss to keep the song and it went on to become one of his biggest hits. The Ramones, meanwhile, remained just outside the mainstream, always lacking the one massive single that would have brought them the fame they deserved. Now, three decades later, the Gaslight Anthem are like something out of speculative fiction: this is what pop music would be if Springsteen hadn't listened to his producer, let the Ramones record the song, and launched the C.B.G.B.'ers into megastardom.
At any rate, the Gaslight Anthem recall the best of Springsteen's brand of heartland rock. Armed with lyrics steeped in Americana and backed by what sounds a bit like the Bouncing Souls playing Tom Petty, Brian Fallon's gravelly vocals evoke the Boss at his anthemic peak while somehow managing not to sound derivative. Not an easy feat, to be sure.
Highlights:
Track 1. "Senor and the Queen." Easily the record's most energetic tune, the title track may well be the best example of the soul punk sound in existence. Seriously.
Track 2. "Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?" I love this song. I mean, you've got a driving bass line, a twangy guitar, and a bit of the folksy vibe you associate with Against Me! You really can't go wrong.
Track 3. "Say I Won't (Recognize)." A radio-friendly anthem that adds a dose of pure punk speed to a slower, cowbell-tinged sing-along. You won't be able to keep your hands from clapping or your toes from tapping.
Track 4. "Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts." Okay, this is the Boss, right?
Sobriquet Grade: 89 (B+).
Labels: American punk, B-plus records, Gaslight Anthem, New Jersey Punk, punk, Sobriquet 42, soul punk
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Various Artists -- Quality Punk Rock (Bad Taste Records)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Quality Punk Rock is one of the better samplers to emerge out of the mid-nineties pop-punk boom. Released by Sweden's Bad Taste Records (one of the country's best indie labels) in early 1996, the compilation does not rely too heavily on bands signed to the label, choosing to fashion a "quality" pop-punk record out of contributions from some of Sweden's brighter stars as well as from international acts such as Lagwagon and the Bollweevils instead of cobbling together a mediocre showcase of the label's back catalog. And, for whatever reason, I love the mock-seventies cover. The confused, headphone-wearing girl and the horrible font just feels totally right for the album's campy mood.
Track Listing:Track 1. "Wind in Your Sail" (Lagwagon). I love this song. Seriously: "I live to watch you fail"? The compilation is worth buying for this one lyric alone. Oh, and the song is about as poppy as any Lagwagon track you'll have heard. It's a shame most people had to wait until 2000 when Lagwagon released
Let's Talk About Leftovers to get ahold of this song.
Track 2. "Memories of You" (Pridebowl). Snotty-sounding vocals lamenting a poor father-son relationship. Fortunately, it lacks the syrup of emo.
Track 3. "7 Clicks" (Bollweevils). The Bollweevils rule. That's all you need to know.
Track 4. "Labios De Mierda" (Satanic Surfers). The Satanic Surfers never disappoint. Pop-punk about a "guy who's sure got a way with turds." Oh, the potty humor never stops.
Track 5. "Thought" (Turtlehead). Bass-driven Scottish punk. For some reason, this sounds as if it could be on the
Mallrats soundtrack. Just don't ask me why.
Track 6. "Cardboard Boxes" (Loosegoats). Clearly recorded before the band became alt-country (thank God), "Cardboard Boxes" features a pretty impressive lead guitar and is an amusingly chaotic-sounding addition to an otherwise polished-sounding compilation.
Track 7. "Bubble Burst" (Adhesive). One of Adhesive's more intense songs, "Bubble Burst" really hits its stride when, towards the end of the track, after a pretty solid bridge, the lyrics collapse into the musings of a wounded, solipsistic loner and waves of frantic guitar riffs wash over the whole mess.
Track 8. "Killer" (Everyday Madness). Ah, crusty Swedish punk girls. Can it get any better?
Track 9. "Alone" (Astream). Pretty standard Astream fare.
Track 10. "Spearmint" (Slobsticks). Pop-punk occasionally interrupted by bursts of ska.
Track 11. "Somehow" (Passage 4). Although "Somehow" conforms to the relatively poppy sound of the compilation, it has a harder edge than most tracks on
Quality Punk Rock.
Track 12. "Dare to Speak" (Scarecrow). If it weren't for the lame "be yourself" lyrics, "Dare to Speak" would be a pretty solid track. Unfortunately, the "don't take shit" and "work hard" messages throughout the song remind me a bit too much of the equally lame stuff I expect from, say, MxPx.
Track 13. "Corruption" (Sarcoblaster). Okay, now this is what most people expect to come out of Scandinavia: hard, loud speedcore.
Track 14. "No Way Out" (Home Grown). Another solid track, "No Way Out" is exactly what you'd expect from Home Grown: silly lyrics ("my dog's inbred"), loads of backing vocals, and fairly straight-forward pop-punk.
Track 15. "Days Like This" (Slobax). What starts out as a relatively average-sounding hardcore track soon becomes something quite different when decidedly un-hardcore vocals join what may be one of the catchiest guitar riffs ever to come out of Uppsalla. And the oohs and aahs are, as NOFX would say, "in just the right places."
Track 16. "Yesterday (When I Was Mad)" (Randy). Despite its occasional use of rapcore vocals, "Yesterday (When I Was Mad) is another delightfully poppy track.
Sobriquet Grade: 88 (B+).
Labels: B-plus records, compilations, pop-punk, punk, Sobriquet 41, Swedish punk
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
People tend to compare Adhesive to Bad Religion, and for good reason. Indeed, the band's first full-length album, 1996's
Sideburner, features the sort of vocal harmonization (the Swedish quartet's oohs and aahs bear more than a passing resemblance to the sound Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz tend to work into their songwriting) and the polished melodic instrumentation one generally associates with Bad Religion. Furthermore, despite writing in a foreign tongue, Adhesive's richly allusive, metaphor-laden lyrics do not shy away from the use of sophisticated vocabulary to convey their meaning.
That said, Adhesive's sound on Sideburner is relatively one-dimensional, though the dimension is, admittedly, a highly-listenable one.
Highlights:
Track 4. "On a Pedestal." Quite possibly the best song on Sideburner, "On a Pedestal" is Adhesive's parable of Faustian ambition (complete with a suitably Mephistophelean shopkeeper) set to catchy melodic hardcore.
Track 5. "Scottie." Despite the song's overt reference to Trekkie culture, "Scottie" has nothing to do with kitschy American sci-fi. Rather, the song waxes metaphysical, expressing the pain of the speaker's solipsistic existence and questioning whether or not the palpable loneliness he (or she) experiences in "a domestic jail" is, in fact, a ubiquitous emotion spanning all humanity.
Track 7. "Scent of Life." While not wholly original, "Scent of Life" is a hook-heavy statement of an individual's existential self-actualization.
Sobriquet Grade: 85 (B).
Labels: Adhesive, B records, melodic hardcore, punk, Scandinavian punk, Sobriquet 41, Swedish punk
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Circle Jerks -- Group Sex
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Clocking in at an anemic fifteen minutes and forty seconds, the Circle Jerks' fourteen song debut album remains one of the most influential hardcore punk records ever recorded. Although vocalist Keith Morris (formerly of Black Flag) and guitarist Greg Hetson (ex-Redd Kross, current Bad Religion) may have more recognizable names and more famous bodies of work, it is Lucky Lehrer's frenetic jazz-tinged drumming that seems to drive
Group Sex. That said, Keith Morris, whose drugged-out vocals alternate between constrained fury and bursts of outright frenzy (the bipolarity of which is perhaps best heard on "I Just Want Some Skank"), somehow manages to keep up with Lehrer's pounding and delivers almost as impressive a performance.
The album also features two songs originally written for and recorded by Black Flag: "Wasted" and "Don't Care."
Highlights:
Track 1. "Deny Everything." Twenty-eight seconds of the sort of paranoia-tinged ranting Keith Morris brought with him from Black Flag shouted over an impenetrable wall of sound. You really can't ask for much more.
Track 2. "I Just Want Some Skank." Remember Howard Dean's scream? Speed it up, make it sound even more insane, and add drums and guitar and you've got "I Just Want Some Skank."
Track 3. "Beverly Hills." Roger Rogerson's bassline manages to convey a sense of impending disaster without crossing the line into outright fury. Keith Morris crosses it.
Track 8. "World Up My Ass." This is about as snotty as hardcore can get. Play it loud.
Sobriquet Grade: 87 (B+).
Labels: American punk, B-plus records, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, hardcore, So Cal punk, SST bands
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HorrorPops -- Kiss Kiss Kill Kill
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
I've always been a sucker for Scandinavian punk. I mean, Ebba Gron's
1978-1982 anthology was probably the first real punk rock record I ever owned, so I hold a certain reverence for bands hailing from the Nordic lands. Years after I first got a hold of that cassette, towards the end of my high school career when I lived in Norway, I started seriously exploring the Scandinavian indie scene, discovering Turbonegro, Flying Crap, Kjott, Captain Not Responsible, Slobax, Satanic Surfers, Adhesive, and a slew of other awesome groups. Strangely, though, Denmark's HorrorPops didn't pop up on my radar until "Going to the Disco?" went into heavy rotation on the Sirius Punk channel a few months ago. And, boy, what a band to miss.
Equal parts pop punk, new wave, rockabilly, and surf punk, HorrorPops evoke images of the Cramps, Groovie Ghoulies, and Misfits while somehow managing not to sound even remotely derivative. With Patricia Day plucking away at her custom upright bass and playing the part of the tattooed
femme fatale to a T, HorrorPops look about as cool as they sound. For lovers of bass-driven rock, especially,
Kiss Kiss Kill Kill is a fantastically eerie, delightfully moody album foregrounding one of the more neglected instruments in punk.
Highlights:Track 1. "Thelma & Louise." If that dreadful
Crossroads movie found inspiration in this song, there's a good chance it would have been cool.
Track 4. "Heading for the Disco?" Hilariously snarky lyrics about a Bret Michaels-obsessed club goer sung snottily over a a great psychobilly bassline.
Track 5. "Kiss Kiss Kill Kill." The ghost of Pat Benatar (though, Benatar's status as a living person suggests "ghost" mightn't be the the best word) seems to haunt this strangely eighties-sounding song.
Track 7. "Hitchcock Starlet." A beautiful ballad showcasing the more melodic range of Day's seductive voice. In fact, I can't help but think Nick Cave would have wanted to do a duet with Day on
Murder Ballads had he heard this song before heading to the studio.
Track 9. "HorrorBeach Pt. II." A masterfully creepy surfpunk song.
Track 11. "Keep My Picture!" Another of Day's sultrier vocal performances.
Sobriquet Grade: 89 (B+).Labels: B-plus records, Danish punk, HellCat bands, HorrorPops, rockabilly, Scandinavian punk, Sobriquet 40, surfpunk
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The Distillers -- Coral Fang
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Despite Gil Norton's slick production, the Distillers' third and final album, 2003's
Coral Fang, retains much of the saw-toothed fury for which the band is famous. Of course, even the strongest belt sander in the shop couldn't smooth out Brody Dalle's vocals -- indeed, the former Mrs. Armstrong's voice tears a jagged hole through the album's aural fabric with a gravelly ferocity beyond anything her ex-husband could muster, even if he'd smoked his way through a crate of Pall Malls.
That said, while Dalle continues to spit her trademark venom throughout the album,
Coral Fang does lack some of the bite for which
The Distillers (2000) and
Sing Sing Death House (2002) earned praise. This tamer, poppier sound is particularly evident in the record's latter half, when acoustic guitars and melodic backing vocals soften the sonic blow showcased on tracks like "Drain the Blood" and "Dismantle Me."
Highlights:
Track 1. "Drain the Blood." A bilious screed penned by a woman "living on shattered faith" among murderers and predators. Nice.
Track 2. "Dismantle Me." A hook-laden, hard-driving raw nerve of a tune, reminiscent of the the band's earlier sound.
Track 5. "Coral Fang." The album's title track is pure punk: fast, loud, and damn pissed. With a near-perfect balance of melodic
ohhs-wah-oohs and blood-curdling screeching sung over solid 77-style riffs, "Coral Fang" captures the energy of the eponymous album better than any other song on the record.
Track 6. "The Hunger." Leave it to Dalle to transform what initially sounds like Tom Petty playing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" into the pounding catharsis of a scorned lover slashing at the stifling loneliness closing in on her. It's also a perfect lead-in to "Hall of Mirrors," the album's beautifully vitriolic break-up song.
Track 8. "Beat Your Heart Out." An incredibly catchy single, "Beat Your Heart Out" continues to enjoy a good deal of airtime on Sirius's Punk channel, as well it should.
Sobriquet Grade: 92 (A-). This is about as close to an A as an A-minus record can get. It's not quite groundbreaking, but it's great nonetheless. I have to admit, I love the fact that when some people started throwing fits about the album's original cover art (a crucified woman, nude save for a pair of stiletto heels, wounded in Christ-like fashion), the Distillers replaced the offending image with a crowd of cute, furry animals. One of the best albums of the decade.
Labels: A-minus records, American punk, Distillers, Epitaph bands, HellCat bands, punk, Sobriquet 40
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Formula 27 is easily one of my favorite 7-inch'ers ever. I remember driving to Minneapolis with my roommate, stopping by Extreme Noise, poring over the crates of vinyl, realizing that my finances were rather limited and, ultimately, deciding that if I was going to allow myself to "splurge" on anything, it would be on this four-song EP. I also remember driving my roommate crazy by playing it over and over again on our lone turntable the second we got home.
