Best Of Pop Punk: installment the second

jfc I am high as fuck right now
It's been a few days since I took the D heh you know heh heh but no ok hold on
It's been a few days since I took my vitamin D supplement and ha ha oh wow great job sick self care a+ would follow up trauma with neglect again 100/100. To make up for lost time, I just trepanned myself and smooshed 15000 IU between the hemispheres of my brain. It seems to be working, though, because I instantaneously became manic and capable of punching the unpunchable. Blog blog fight the PTSD.

I'm sorry let's move on

I initially planned on making this a three part thing, but honestly, I don't feel like resizing and underscoring 10 different C&Ps right now.

5 it is.

20.) Apocalypse Hoboken - Easy Instructions For Complex Machinery LP (1996)

So before I say this, I'd like to aknowledge that I am but a blip in a vast universe, and regarding media, I've consumed maybe .1%. There're tons of unsung acts out there that desperately need recognition, and the likelihood that I have heard them - while much more likely in the information age - is low. Qualifier aside, hyperbole to the front: Apocalypse Hoboken is one of thee most underrated/underappreciated bands I can think of. Over their modest discography, they present so many great ideas, so little regard for convention, and most importantly, so many fucking great songs. It baffles me these guys are not more celebrated nowadays - their catalog is incredible. This album is their 2nd, and while I could've easily put House Of The Rising Son Of A Bitch here instead, it's an ideal starting point. It's not your typical 3-chord pop punk, it's something much more loose and open ended, with smartass parodic lyrics in sort of a 90's Fat Wreck vein.

Check out "Be Alright", "Dean Is A Punk", and "Smoker's Cough"

Other recommendations: Jerk Lessons EP (1994), Date Rape Nation EP (1994), House Of The Rising Son Of A Bitch LP (1998)

19.) The Menzingers - On The Impossible Past LP (2012)

This one's kinda hard to measure erm, "objectively", since it's such a sentimental favorite, but well, it's an inherently sentimental album. I mean, look at the title. Lyrically this is an exploration of the two songwriter's pasts, with a vague sense of continuity from Greg, and slightly less so from Tom. Fortunately, if you're into storytelling, this is a Greg-heavy LP, which is also fortunate 'cause he's a much better songwriter, unleashing tons of alt-rocky/pop punk gems with beautiful melodies and huge choruses. Just listen to that riff in "Casey" that anchors the song, changing slightly midway to make it even better. There are couple weaker tracks on here ("Ava House" blows), but it's such a great piece altogether it hardly dilutes the impact. It was a pretty huge change of pace for the band, so if you wanna explore them further, maybe go forward first, then backwards.

Check out "Gates", "Casey", and "Mexican Guitars"

Other recommendations: On The Impossible Past Acoustic demo (2012), Rented World LP (2014), After The Party LP (2017)

18.) Joyce Manor - Never Hungover Again LP (2014)

I was sorta conflicted over picking this LP over their self-titled, but ultimately, this is one I never get sick of. I first heard Joyce Manor opening for AJJ and The World Is... back in 2011, and I was blown away. My weakness, as touched on in the Martha review above, is pop-punk that sticks roughly to traditional sounds, but with a strong 'x-factor'. In Joyce Manor's case, it's the band's internal dynamics: the combination of Kurt's heavy handed, busy percussion, Barry's charismatic, desperate voice, and their penchant for keeping things 'Guided By Voices concise'. This album isn't as frantic and 'punk' as their first, or as weird and aNyThInG gOeS as their second, but something new and refined while amplifying all their strengths.
Check out the sick guitar interplay in "The Jerk", the heartsmushing "Christmas Card", and build-up anthem "Schley"

Other recommendations: It's all good, really. Everything they've done is worth hearing, but here: Constant Headache EP (2010), Joyce Manor LP (2011), Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired LP (2012)

17.) Murmurs - Fly With The Unkindness LP (2012)

Kicking off with one of the most subtly bleak choruses I've ever heard, in which one vocalist quantifies that, realistically, he only has another 35 years before he'll (statistically) kick the bucket, this is not your standard pop punk album. From there's a dark, churning block - that could be metaphorical, but I doubt it - about coming across a friend's suicide, some IV drug use references, and closes with the best 'I'll miss you' anthem possible. It's pretty heavy handed, and unlike Off With Their Heads, a real instrumental darkness looms throughout, though it never topples the high energy catharsis with dismal grit. I hope so bad these guys play again. Their second album is much different, and took me a year to really 'get', but it's equally worth tracking down, even though it falls further outside of the pop-punk descriptor.
Check out "35 Summers Left", "Rookery", and "Snow Angels"

Other recommendations: Bound LP (2014)

16.) Good Luck - Into Lake Griffy LP (2008)

Here's a pretty great example of why the Sniffin' Glues ethos of "here are 3 chords, now form a band" falls flat after 3 decades. Like sure, it's not like you have to be fucking Lagwagon to write punk songs, but think of all the notable hardcore bands from the 80's. With the exception of Minor Threat's early stuff, pretty much every band of note were not just fumbling through A D E A A A A E shit, but were pretty seriously talented. Okay, end intro. Good Luck are all exceptionally skilled, is what I'm saying. Enough so that they basically reinvent pop-punk here without ever straying off too much. Don't let the Plan It X associations scare you off - this is nothing like the rest of the stable. Every single song here is great, featuring: multi-vocal interplay, tons of clever hooks and melodies you haven't heard a thousand times, wonderful lyrics, and SHREDDING, MOTHERFUCKER. But melodic and unlike jerking off with a lube made of arpeggios and shit.
Check out "Come Home", "Hey Matt", and "1001 Open Hands"

Other recommendations: Without Hesitation LP (2011)

Desultory's "Tears" and how life is bad

It looks like I finally learned how embedding works. Sure, I'll miss the inappropriate stand-ins for actual content - we all will - and of course the skinny teenage play-alongs, but this is a bright new dawn, and here's a video without a torso holding a chapman stick:

When I was a teenager I was sorta bullied out of liking stuff I actually liked. See, I wasn't always the archivist sleeping pill we enjoy today, chatting up the honeys about 4MenWithBeards reissues and near-mint acetates. I sorta hated music. I mean, not aggressively - I wasn't burning 2 Live Crew albums with my church group - I just felt incapable of enjoying it. 

When I found myself in Catholic school in 2002, my peers were baffled by this disengagement.

Peer: What kinda stuff do you listen to?
Me: uh
Peer: Do you have a favorite band?

Me: I like the song "Clint Eastwood" and that band that did the soundtrack to Fooly Cooly

Thus spawned a focus group, dedicated to making me a regular person. Sadly, 13 year olds at the turn of the century aren't really calibrated to market trends, so somehow I ended up an asshole who likes Korn. I dunno how old you are, or if this was a thing you paid attention to, but Nu-Metal wasn't exactly fresh in 2003. Sure, I got Slipknot's new album and it was the bee's fucking knees - the charts agreed - but it was all downhill from here. Emo was redefining the youth aesthetic, and elsewhere, Gothenberg-style Metalcore was muscling out the aging chinbraid factions. If you were 15 and wanted "heavy", you went towards screaming dudes who liked Zao and At The Gates, not greasy Lynyrd Skynrd fans who worked at gas stations. 

When I suddenly found myself surrounded by hundreds of public school kids, all worldly and guiltlessly masturbating, it quickly hit me that XXL Mushroomhead tees weren't considered a deft practice. I mustered up as much integrity as possible amidst my new friends, but no individual should have to defend careering-era Disturbed alone. So I caved. Suddenly I was ALL ABOUT FUCKIN' REAL-ASS METAL™. I started with some foreplay classics - Immolation, Cannibal Corpse, Dark Angel, and the like - but before I knew it, I was chained to the wall in a makeshift sex dungeon, bidding on Gut and Meatshits 7"s on Ebay. I mean, sure, I enjoyed that shit okay, but the real benefit was the incoherence of the whole. While Nu-Metal was digestible radio rock, never drawn too far from Grunge Rock and Pantera, the seedy underbelly of tr00 metal was an almost un-critique-able in it's obliqueness. 

Me: *plays Rompeprop's "I Am The Dolphin Sprayhole Fucker"*

Peer: lol wtf this is terrible

Me: kek u just dont get it go listen to some lamb of god, nerd xD

Ultimately I stopped giving a shit, cut off my three foot ponytail, and dedicated my life to stenography for Katie Crutchfield's musical career. Today I put on Desultory for the first time in close to a decade. If you read my last thing on Joyce Manor, this won't surprise you, but I'm not feeling excellent. But you know what they say: when life hands you suicide and homelessness, make lemonade you can sip on while you stave off a panic attack. Also, listen to death metal, even though it's overwhelmingly negative,

Desultory were an early example of Melodic Death Metal, and popped up in Sweden sometime in the late 80's. They have a couple good albums, this one (Into Eternity), and '94's Bitterness, but it's specifically this song I wanna highlight. As I sat on the gazebo steps this morning, embittered by how shitty and rainy this Spring has remained, I contemplated what's next: do I keep looking for another house? Do I hold out for a friend's room? Or do I just scream "eat shit" at all my relationships, burn my possessions in the Whole Foods parking lot and catch the southbound to Tucson? 

Then that riff at 2:03 came on. In a song as contextually appropriate as "Tears", that melodic build suddenly blasted me into a magisterial whimsy, battling wendigos and shit, mournful but PROUD and UNFLINCHING. For the first time in 24 hours, I felt something, and in the most dorky way achievable. "Yeah, the sky's still a bald pallet of hopelessness, but MY WORD the atmosphere of it all!" 

And there in the distance sat the Elysian majesty of a New Seasons cafeteria, where I slipped away to slap a few hundred words down with no clear trajectory. 

THE POINT:
1.) uh

2.) high school is hard

3.) that song is a good song

4.) 

5.) I'll write something better soon

It's a good thing I was bullied into being a sexless "metal maniac" sometimes, buried beneath cascading layers of incomprehensible "otherness" and irony. Because now that my taste is earnest, I'm often surprised by how good a lot of the music I crammed down my throat was.