2004 was the year mainstream pop/punk decided to grow up. Just a year earlier, blink-182 had completed its evolution by releasing its self-titled album, which ditched the dick jokes in favor of pianos, WWII-inspired monologues, and Robert Smith collaborations. This year, Good Charlotte, Green Day, New Found Glory, Simple Plan, Sugarcult, and Sum 41 all followed suit with varying degrees of success.
Sum 41's Chuck was the culmination of a transition that began on their third album, 2002's Does This Look Infected? While about half of that album showed growth in the form of songs erring on the latter side of the pop/punk equation, the other half was still written for the radio and MTV commercials. The result was a disjointed effort, stuck somewhere between the band's past and its near future. On Chuck, however, the band fully committed to the new style, managing to create a cohesive product that was at once its heaviest and lightest output. The intro didn't start with the words "Children of the beast embrace," and the band indulged its metal influence in the form of actual songs, rather than by pretending to be an '80s hair metal band. For a band that made its name on immaturity, even relative to many of its peers in the inherently immature genre that is pop/punk, Sum 41 was actually largely successful on its fourth album. The album's default sound is a heavier-than-usual punk sound that retains a strong sense of melody, and it works quite well with Deryck Whibley's voice and the album's big production. On "No Reason,""Open Your Eyes," and album closer "88," the band really sounds at home, providing three of their strongest tracks to date. Though they occasionally sound like they're trying to too hard to be The Offspring, most of these songs hold up tremendously well to date. It's the other songs on the album where it gets interesting. The rest of the tracklist is split between the band's hardest and softest songs to date. On the heavy side is single "We're All to Blame," which executed the loud/soft dynamic better than I had remembered. But the other songs in this style provide the most obvious missteps on the album, such as "Angels With Dirty Faces" and "The Bitter End." On the other side of the dichotomy are the lighter, acoustic-based songs, all of which still sound pretty good after 10 years. "Some Say" still sounds a little too much like Oasis, but "Slipping Away" and "Pieces" are both quality tunes, despite the former's significant lyrical cringeworthiness. Lyrical complexity has never been one of the band's strengths, although the music is often strong enough to overcome this fault. (The only word longer than one syllable in the chorus of "No Reason" is, in fact, the word "reason.") At the end of the day, Sum 41 was never going to write a groundbreaking album (and 2011's Screaming Bloody Murder showed they probably shouldn't try to), but Chuck was about as strong of an album as an early '00s mainstream pop/punk band could write while still experimenting and stepping outside of their comfort zone. And, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it better now than when it originally came out. This was also their last album with Dave "Brownsound" Baksh, who left prior to 2007's too-poppy Underclass Hero. That album saw the band begin to fade into general obscurity, remembered only when nostalgia creeps up and tempts you to play "Fat Lip" on your friend's old iPod on a road trip. But, listening to Chuck again shows that maybe they should be remembered for just a little more than that.
It is not unusual for punk bands to congregate around a single influence or set of influences. For as much as punk pretends to be revolutionary and different, the vast majority of it just sounds like other bands. The Ramones, the "first" punk band, just ran '50s pop/rock through bigger amplifiers and distorted guitars and sang about edgier topics. Now, there is a whole genre of punk referred to as "Ramonescore," featuring notable acts such as The Queers, Screeching Weasel, The Lillingtons, and Teenage Bottlerocket, who even managed to directly steal the lyrical content of an early Ramones song. Punk music is, almost by definition, a simple form of music, so it can be difficult to sound unique within its confines. This has always been an issue of varying severity. At its most acceptable, bands simply take the influence of earlier bands and modernize it before expanding their influence and moving on. At its worst, bands rip off other bands' sounds and release the same albums year after year. Many of the bands on Fat Wreck Chords in the '90s sounded a whole lot like NOFX, and Tim Armstrong is content to sign Rancid rip-offs like Left Alone and Time Again to his Hellcat Records label. (Armstrong even guests on their songs, despite the fact that they clearly worship the guy. Weird.) The really special bands in punk have managed to invent whole subgenres that have blown up since then. Black Flag invented hardcore, The Misfits invented horrorpunk, Descendents invented modern pop/punk, Operation Ivy invented skacore, Rancid invented streetpunk, and so on. Since 2000, two bands have defined the shape of punk to come more than any other: Hot Water Music and Against Me!, who both, coincidentally (or maybe not), came from Gainesville, Florida. Hot Water Music, who adapted a lot from earlier bands like Leatherface, essentially invented what has alternately been termed "beardpunk," "gruff punk," and "orgcore," after the sound's popularity among the readers and writers of Punknews.org. For a while, it seemed as if every new band sounded like they had listened to way too much HWM growing up. Some bands, such as Alkaline Trio, The Lawrence Arms, and The Gaslight Anthem had clearly listened to quite a bit of Hot Water Music in their younger years, but made the sound their own. However, many bands, like Red City Radio, Nothington, Iron Chic, and countless others, felt no shame in jumping directly onto the bandwagon. Unfortunately, most left behind the technical precision of HWM's rhythm section that made them so special, instead simply adopting their heavy, anthemic sound and rough, manly gang vocals. Some have even become influencers themselves, such as Dillinger Four, whose throaty, bass-heavy brand of orgcore has informed Banner Pilot, Off With Their Heads, and Dear Landlord. It now seems as if every punk band wears flannel and rocks a full beard. Against Me! further pushed orgcore forward while also almost singlehandedly inventing the modern version of the folk/punk genre. Shortly following AM!'s ascension to the punk mainstream, folk/punk was dominating the new music landscape. Entire recordlabels were focused on the stuff, with new bands copying not just AM!'s sound, but also their DIY mindset and general aesthetic. Notable acts such as Fake Problems and Cobra Skulls were labeled AM! rip-offs when they debuted, although, to their credit, they have both since expanded their sound considerably. AM! abandoned the sound they created almost as quickly as they founded it, but in their absence, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Ghost Mice, and Defiance, Ohio took up the torch. They absorbed the folk side of the sound and ran with it, including traditional folk instruments and producing a decidedly more upbeat version of the early AM! sound, complete with whiny vocals and much less serious lyrics. All of this is a long-winded way of explaining that punk has always been a music that goes through certain trends. Obviously, many varieties of punk exist at the same time, but the popular boom of new bands often seems to convene around a similar sound that changes every few years. The currently booming sound is that of Weezer. Booming is probably not an adjective often associated with Weezer, but nevertheless, pop/punk bands have been increasingly turning to the Weezer goldmine from the early '90s. Many bands are digging in the '90s alt-rock realm and modernizing the sound in their own way, but a lot of the attention seems to be focused on pre-hiatus Weezer. While I was not nearly musically conscious in 1994 and 1996, the years of Weezer's first two releases, I can feel the band's influence still very present in the music of this up-and-coming generation of pop/punk bands. Their unique use of soft/loud dynamics, heavily distorted guitars, plodding riffs, catchy melodies, falsetto backing vocals, and self-deprecating, nerdy lyrics has proven to be quite the treasure for new bands looking to update a classic sound. I first noticed the beginnings of the trend in 2011 when Bomb the Music Industry! released Vacation, an album that was equal parts punk, Brian Wilson, and Weezer. The Sidekicks followed less than a year later with Awkward Breeds, an indie-punk record clearly influenced by Weezer and other '90s bands (like Third Eye Blind). The trend continued as I discovered bands like Sundials and Joyce Manor. This was all harmless and fun for a while, but this year, the trend has simply gotten out of control. Lately, the trend has been nearly epidemic. Instead of adopting their sound as an influence, bands have simply been including Weezer songs on their albums. The Menzingers' recent single "In Remission" is a little more shouty than Weezer ever got, but the first half of that song is straight-up Weezer. (That the video is a near copy of the video for "Undone (The Sweater Song)," save the dogs, doesn't exactly help discourage the comparison.) Besides that song and the Smashing Pumpkins song that precedes it on the album, the band's songs are very much their own. Masked Intruder's "Weirdo" captures both the sound and the spirit of several early Weezer songs (think Pinkerton), while the rest of the album is essentially a Ramonescore album (full circle, see?). Chumped, a female-fronted pop/punk band, just released a Weezer song called "Hot 97 Summer Jam," which may or may not be a reference to the year Weezer started going downhill. BtMI! singer Jeff Rosenstock's side project, Antarctigo Vespucci (which also features Chris Farren of Fake Problems), released a mini-album of Weezer songs earlier this year, although that shouldn't really surprise anyone who follows those bands (BtMI! has covered both of Weezer's first two albums in full at separate concerts). Beyond that, bands like Meridian are getting in on the more melancholy side of the Weezer trend. Even though singer Max Stern's two bands had previously associated almost exclusively with post-hardcore/twinkly emo and folk/rock, he threw a couple Weezer songs in on Meridian's latest record. (Although some YouTube digging reveals that his passion for Weezer had presented itself earlier.) The Swellers got a little Weezer-y on their latest effort, and You Blew It!, another 2010s emo band, even released a 5-song EP of Weezer covers, titled You Blue It!, earlier this year (which feels a little half-assed, now that I think about it). Like I said, it's epidemic. Where will this trend stop? Is it time to add Weezercore to the list of punk sub-subgenres? How much more Weezer can the world take, especially now that Weezer itself has started releasing music again? Are they aware of this trend? Are they trying to cash in on the momentum and hype surrounding their music? And what will follow Weezercore's inevitable decline? Let's all pray the grunge revival stops here.
So, I've been reading The AV Club's awesome Fear of a Punk Decade series with earnest over the past few months, as it slowly gets released, and I realized what has bugged me about the articles so far. The series concerns itself with many of the most important albums, bands, and movements of 1990s punk, but, unfortunately, I view all of these albums as a relative outsider. Yes, I grew up with the albums and bands, and I cherish them just as much as (or maybe even more than) the people who were conscious of their existence in the '90s, but they aren't really mine. Even though the songs have racked up thousands of plays in my CD player, iTunes library, and Spotify over the years, I didn't live the albums. I wasn't there when they were being released. I didn't feel the hype of the artists and the excitement of their shows. I didn't have my life changed by these bands in the same way; more accurately, they just calibrated and corrected my taste in music as it worked its way off of training wheels. Property of Zack did a great job examining the cultural and musical impact and legacy of albums released in 2003, but their tastes seemed to skew toward the pop/emo side of things. In 2004 was regularly subjected to the likes of Incubus, Lostprophets, and even Courtney Love due to their ubiquity on Fuse, but I always found them to be thoroughly dull and uninspired. I was also bombarded with the aforementioned pop/emo, from bands like Hawthorne Heights, Armor for Sleep, and My Chemical Romance. Although I found myself enjoying the occasional song by these bands, I never took to them like I did so many other artists. So I decided that I wanted to write about the albums I truly grew up with, since no one else seems to be doing it at the moment. The first album I bought (besides my regrettable boy band purchases in the late '90s/early 2000s) was Good Charlotte's The Young and the Hopeless, a few months after its October 2003 release, so 2004 was about a year or so into my musical journey. I feel that a decade removed is a decent perspective from which to view music, so now seems as good a time as ever to look at what 2004 meant to me and what it means to me now. I'll do my best to write solely about the albums and artists that I was listening to at that time, ignoring great albums released that year that I later discovered, like Descendents' Cool to Be You or The Hold Steady's debut, Almost Killed Me. I also will do my best not to exclude artists that I quickly abandoned or shunned, instead choosing to explore when and why I moved away from them when they once meant so much to me. So that's it. I don't have a timetable or a schedule or anything. I'll just write when I feel like it, and I'll try to keep it short-ish, as I tend to ramble when talking about music and/or reminiscing, which could be a lethal combo in this setting. That's all for now. Bye bye.
I'm coming out of a fairly rough time in my life. I won't go into many details, but I feel like it's finally over. This has been a very good week, and I'm in a very good place mentally, professionally, and physically. The Flatliners are quite an incredible band, and they deserve a better introduction than the one I'm giving them. Their 2010 album, Cavalcade, stands as one of the truly great and uniquely awesome punk albums ever to come out in the 40-year history of the genre. Their most recent album, last year's Dead Language, nearly equals the power of its predecessor. The songs are just as good, if not better on average than those on Cavalcade. If anything, the only thing Dead Language lacks is the same immediacy felt on Cavalcade, and, as such, the impact is somewhat lesser. Nevertheless, this song speaks directly to my current situation. This song is not among the top 10 (or maybe even 20) best songs by this band, but it is a decent introduction to the band and album. However, the words and emotions portrayed on this song sum up my experiences so perfectly, it would be a crime not to choose it. The incredibly heartfelt way in which he screams about coming back to life again, the way he speaks of the debt he eternally owes to his friends for being there, it's just perfect. One of my favorite things about music is its ability to translate very specifically to my own life, letting me know that I'm not alone and there are others going through the same thing. And, more importantly, there are others who have gone through the same thing and survived it, coming out on the other side a better, stronger version of themselves. That's what "Resuscitation of the Year" is about: coming back to life. And that's the way I feel today. I hope that feeling never goes away.
Okay, I'm getting really bad about these SotDs. Sorry. Things have been busy around here. Anyway, I gotta go to bed, like, now-ish, so here's a really quick song for ya. Parov Stelar is a dude who plays a kind of music often referred to as electro-swing. Most of his stuff is a lot more upbeat and dancey than this, but I really like this song. So, chill out a little tonight and throw this one on your next hangout playlist!
Downtown Struts are a band formed in 2008 in the great city of Chicago, IL, though they also feature two dudes from the Bay Area. These influences result in a blend of Cali street punk and Midwest pop/punk for a sound that is rough around the edges but distinctly melodic and upbeat. I saw them open for The Lawrence Arms on New Year's Eve, and it was a bummer to see the crowd relatively motionless for the entirety of their set. It's a shame, because they are actually a very good band. I think this is mostly because they are not very well-known and their music doesn't have the manic pace that the other three bands playing that night have. With one full-length, a few EPs, and a split 7" under their belts, we see them starting to move into new territory, carving out their own unique sound among the often similar-sounding bands who play Midwest punk. Their most recent new song, "Childhood," came out on a split EP with Nothington, which featured a new track and a cover from each band. Downtown Struts' cover was of New Order's "Ceremony," which I highly recommend checking out if you like that song or what you've heard from Downtown Struts. The cover is a great choice to pair with the original, which is a step away from punk. It is clear that New Order and similar bands are becoming an increasingly greater influence on the group. If "Childhood" is any indication, the new album from Downtown Struts has a chance to really break some ground in the punk scene. Their 2012 album, Victoria!, had flashes of this new sound, but although the album was well-received, it wasn't really anything all that new, and it largely flew under the radar. I expect them to turn heads with whatever comes next. Give "Childhood" a listen to see where they've come from and where they're headed!
The Ergs! were a pop/punk band in the vein of Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Chixdiggit!, and a million other bands that sound like these guys. They played fast, snotty, poppy punk songs mainly about girls and being young. If that sounds like nothing new, well, you'd be right. But sometimes you don't need to do anything especially new, you just have to take a classic sound and do it really well. That's what The Ergs! did. They were one of a long line of great punk bands coming from New Jersey, the same scene that has produced bands like The Bouncing Souls, Lifetime, The Misfits, Saves the Day, Streetlight Manifesto, The Gaslight Anthem, and many, many others. During their short, eight-year run, The Ergs! released two classic albums and a whole bunch of EPs, splits, and singles. Their debut album, dorkrockcorkrod, came out in 2004 and instantly made a huge impact on the scene. But lead singer/drummer Mikey Erg had different plans for the band. He had long expressed a desire to be more than just a simple pop/punk band, and they proved it with their second and final real album, 2007's Upstairs/Downstairs. A lot of the same short, fast punk was still on the album, but there were also touches of other things. They dropped a random country song with "Stinking of Whiskey Blues," and "Books About Miles Davis" sounds like an old soul song played by a pop/punk band, which is kind of what it actually is. Some people think the band got a little experimental on Upstairs/Downstairs or felt that the album that followed would have been the one where all the experimenting came together in a much more logical way. But, the band broke up a year later, so we'll never know. Most fans prefer dorkrockcorkrod or the half-album Jersey's Best Prancers that came between the two. "Pray For Rain" is one of those perfect pop/punk songs that you can listen to endlessly and never get sick of. As such, it's become something of a signature song for The Ergs!, and it's easy to see why. It's a love song about a hopeless guy who can't figure out a way to get the girl to return his love. It's fast, ultra-catchy, self-deprecating, and simple. And sometimes, that's all you need to make a great song. It even ends with a clip of Henry Rollins being cynical and angry, as usual. Check it out!
