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)

Rented World: Eh.

I guess I'm writing on here again. How about some worthlessly late appraisals of 2014 releases I started writing about, then abandoned to work on a farm/hop trains poorly?

This one was a hhhHHHWHALE of a bummer. As evidenced in that mindnumbing bible of a post I shat out on The Menzingers an eon back, I followed these guys from the start, but never really dug them much 'til On The Impossible Past "dropped" in 2012. To me, the shift into a more "alternative" direction (which entailed a slowed roll, less dated scream-singing, and a generally more mersh luster) granted the songs a license to DOWN THA PUNX and focus on realizing their melodic potential, which, tbh lol, was the only thing that kept me paying attention after the first two.
When "In Remission" was released as a lead-off for Rented World, I noted a new buttrock-y thuggish-ness to the proceedings, but the successful gamble they take on the song's structure and the multiple, soaring choruses had me stoked as fuck. I puked out Punknews-y sentiments like 'FUTURE AOTY FER SURE, BRO' to the (very) few friends who showed interest, but then "I Don't Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore" hit the net. To be fair, it is a solid track, one which we can enjoy with our well-oiled beards, U.S. microbrews, and sense of entitlement in the pit, but certainly confirmed my lead on their descent into dumber territory. The cauldron of influences the band are ladling from this time around is much more 90's MTV rock heavy, and hooolllyyy shit am I not nostalgic for that bullshit. I know I'm the poster-boy anomaly for my entire now-grown-up generation, but I fucking loathed construction-site boombox rock like Weezer, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and all that "tortured artist" grunge shit back in the day, and surprisingly, dislike it even more now.

But y'know, NONA was a total Frankenstein of dorky 90's nostalgia, and I fucking loved them before their untimely demise last year. My central issue is more... everything else, really. The production is massive and corny, especially evidenced in the layered vocal moments, and I doubt any stripe of perfectionist savant could sequence these tracks into something cohesive. I'm not demanding a conceptual meisterwerk where each track is a puzzle piece, or hell, even an overarching mood like OTIP - this literally sounds like a bunch of random songs mushed together, though. A chorus here, a bridge there - there's a decommissioned minefield of goodies ("Bad Things" and "Nothing Feels Good Anymore" have a couple great riffs between them despite otherwise being messy/dull), but very few of the tracks throw you into your own angsty, jump-cut apocalypse of a music video as you're walking down the street of the town you claim to hate, reflecting on "tight" friends and "zany" misadventures and whatever.
"In Remission" is fucking fantastic, however, and "Rodent", "I Don't Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore", and "Hearts Unknown" come pretty close, but even Greg's tracks are mostly flaccid ballads too drippy and flat-out depressing to really raise a lighter to. This isn't to say that's Tom's contributions win by any means ("The Talk" is like Green Day "returning to their roots" circa 2010's), but hey, this is the first album I can say the two are neck and neck. One just needed to stop writing good songs, I guess.
Overall, it's not "awful" by any means, just a major step down and into territory I'm generally uninterested in. Having seen them play last year with Lemuria, Cayetana, and PUP was killer, though, and even the most skippable songs here are a lot of fun in a live setting, I just can't see myself listening to this the whole way through much more after this review is over.

some newer plop plunk goods

Cayetana's a three piece from Philly that apparently Tom May did a lot of salivating and interpretive dance propaganda for. I dunno. He gave them positive press, anyway, and of course, as the significantly less interesting songwriter for The Menzingers, you can bet your bottom dollar the people listened.

Cayetana's demo started flying off the big box store shelves late 2012, but I didn't end up hearing them 'til somewhere mid last year, right before I dove into the traveling vortex and forsook the nurturing teat of internet news. The demo, while solid, didn't really sink in much, and I mostly forgot about the band 'til the Hot Dad Calendar 7' was announced back in March. Emphatically throwing my hands up and uttering "oh, what the heck" with a canned asshole laugh, I tracked it down and was actually really impressed. The band's definitely not doing anything flashy here, but much like my favorite band ever, P.S. Eliot (to which the band could be compared), once the thin, flattening production loses it's potency, there are some totally great, endlessly relistenable songs under there. This here single features the title track and a re-recording of the best track from the demo, Ella, and their jangly indie-punk sound really hits home. Points go to the boldly simple-yet-effective songwriting, the emotive, forceful basslines, and the singer's lovely, quivery voice. Give it a go, and then, assuming you don't hate the shit out of it, keep a tongue out for the band's first LP, Nervous Like Me, in August this year.

BONUS ROUND:

Hey, remember when I made that post on how randomly throwing a bunch of female-fronted bands together to make a comparison not only makes you seem like an idiot, but a reductionist/sexist idiot? Because this one takes the cake: 

Gary Sleith ie "some guy on bandcamp": I love indie of this nature, FFO Hop Along, Lemuria, Big Eyes etc I LOVE THIS EP!! They've signed to Tiny Engines, can't wait to near more Favorite track: mountain kids.

Maybe you're not familiar with these three, so let me be direct here: this might be the most ridiculous conglomeration of bands I've ever seen used as a descriptor ever. Ever. Not only do none of these bands play the same style of music, none of them sound even remotely alike at fucking all, nor does Cayetana notably borrow elements from ANY of them. What the fuck is the unifying "nature" here? The vaginas? I mean, seriously, Hop Along sounds so, so unlike Big Eyes it's like - why it's like there was no actual criteria for making this comparison at all!

This is kind of a surprise. I was planning on writing up a positive review of this album, heralding it as "an unfairly ignored blah blah my ass" or something, but then, upon re-listening to it for the first time in a while, it's actually kind of... not my thing. Like, at all, actually. I could tell you why or just move on, but hey, let's be a dick about it for a literary exercise. BASICALLY: are you a man in your mid-20's to early 30's? Do you have a beard and drink fairly often and to excess? Maybe your politics lean more into libertarianism than anything that requires much self-questioning or action? Do you dig later Hot Water Music, Jawbreaker, and Dillinger Four? Then you'll LOVE three thousand bands that synthesize this exact same mixture of elements without adding much of anything to the cannon! With lyrics ranging from quoting Vonnegut to toasting to losing your best gal to vague political commentary to a hamfisted homage to Furi Kuri, you can almost smell the beard oil and Evan Williams through the speakers.
I'm being mean but I can't believe how many bands still sound like this. Some of it's passable, some of it's cringe-worthy or eye-glazingly dull, but holy shit, that complete lack of hooks. And those vocals. Fat Mike levels on unnecessary enunciation on the standard issue Midwest drunk beard guy vocalist makes for not the best time ever. The track "Irish Coffee" is kind of enjoyable, at least. Give it a listen here if I haven't douchebag'd you out of potential interest.

I checked this out because some random guy in the comments section for punknews was like, "Beach Slang is good". SIR ITS A DEAL. Strangely enough, this actually is really, really good, and apparently has an equally good pedigree. I had no idea of this, but apparently the band's made up of members of Ex-Friends, the insanely good NONA, and is helmed by ___ Snyder of Weston. I've physically owned Weston's Got Beat Up for, like, 5 years now, and it just occurred to me I've never even heard it once before, likely because it of the ULTRA POP PUNK cover and song titles. Like "Retarded". Remember the 90's? When that was an okay thing to not only say in public, but title a song as? Looks like I finally have some incentive though, 'cause Snyder's throaty, Paul Westerberg-y vocals and surprisingly heartfelt, yearning, reveling lyrics are the metaphorical shit, and might even be good enough for me to not hate Weston and their (entirely presumed) reliance on "wuh-uh-oh"s and "light-hearted" misogyny.

Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken? is the band's debut, and apparently only dropped a month back, making me topical for once. The 4 tracks here are a fantastic smoothie of 90's power pop a la Gin Blossoms and uh, fairly early Goo Goo Dolls (the whole planet's doing the whole re-sanctification of the shitty 90's bands, so this is now permissible in punkland) poured through a Jawbreaker sieve, replete with Paul Westerberg-Blake Schwarzenbach hybrid vocals. Look, that description kind of makes me do cloying "pfft" noises, too, but trust me - and trust Pitchfork, because me and Pitchfork, we're one in the same on this one. Yes, reliably tight bros 'r' us, all giving Kanye West rave reviews on our respective sites and nodding off as the car continues running in the sealed garage when hyperbole just isn't enough to express our academical snobbery on music that will sound dated in 5 years.
But yeah, this EP is ridiculously good. Check it out here.

Menzingers bring the bottom lip biting action

"Wouldn't it be just a chuckle riot if I totally denounced everything I said here in a future review of the band? Ho HO."
- me in the review of The Menzingers' Chamberlain Waits you totally read

I've written a [hilariously oblique unit]'s worth of reviews since I entered the "blogosphere" back in 2009, and tbh, I'm pretty impressed that I almost uniformly agree with every summation I've published to date. I mean, sure, the writing itself may curdle milk and cause me to cringe so hard the muscle tension collapses my skull, but hey! that consistency! It might sound fucking bonkers to be proud of myself for continuing to agree with myself, but consistently & publicly opining on new/new-to-me music for the sake of generating fresh content is actually pretty difficult. I don't know about you, but I don't naturally osmose a banquet of acerbic, articulate stances and commentary solely from spinning an LP a few times - that shit gets sorted out on the "compose post" screen, mostly.

Weirdly enough, the only post I completely don't get anymore is that review of The Menzingers' debut, A Lesson In The Abuse Of Information Technology. I mean, if you read it, you don't really get spattered by the strings of saliva launching out of the corners of my frothy, hype-spewing mouth, but I was definitely a little tumescent in the genitals over it. Minor tumescence. But then I'm pretty sure that - for whatever reason - I immediately lost interest in it entirely the exact second I hit "publish". Maybe through some insane improbability tied in with quantum mechanics or something. I mean, it doesn't suck the peen/amount fellatio with something degrading, but it sounds about as emotionally resonant (when not boring) to me as if they were playing unaccompanied scales at this point.
CONCLUSION: It's Clash-y, phlegmy pop-punk/punk rock with a few folk numbers, sterile production and groundbreaking, iconic, plastic brain melting social commentary courtesy of the10th grader-discovering-CrimethInc artwork.

Chamberlain Waits was a pretty big step up from the debut and the stronger follow-up EP, Hold On Dodge, and traded in much of their grating, braying sing-scream vocals, gang choruses, and other orgcore sundries for stronger melodicism, songs that don't lose their zing after 10 listens, and lyrical clarity via less mucilaginous cadences. I was about to say something all smarmy and shit like "remember that quote at the top? LEMME FULFILL THAT PROPHECY LIKE AW YEAH" but then I relistened to the album and realized that, while flawed, it's still pretty solid. The real enemy here, though, is the fact that I (again) never ever feel like giving it a full spin. Sure, trax like "Times Tables", "Male Call", and "I Was Born" are all super solid tunes (mostly "Times Tables", which is fantastic), and even though there are only 3 weak tracks, nothing about this album beckons me back for more than the tri-monthly "I guess I could put that on" spin. Nice stuff, but yeah.
CONCLUSION: It's Clash-y, slightly less congested, alternative rock-influenced pop-punk with warm production and nostalgic artwork that brings a tear to the band members' collective eye.

And all of this boring backstory bullshit brings us here:

'Cause it seems The Menzingers are just too deep for me to qualify (big_dog.jpeg), you might wanna take this with a grain of my ass, but I'm pretty sure I actually love this album. Like, as a whole album, and with a lasting love as deep and real as Steve Albini's annoying, "edgy" opinions on everything.  Prior to fully embracing it, though, I'd been on an untouchable, super-posi, LYF IZ WUT U MAKE IT kick from March up to June, all up in this shit like "Latterman isn't very boring" and "I'm going to take steps to improve my life because I'm worth it - L'Oreal". Of course, having spent most of my life in crushing depression, I'm still prone to relapses, and that's both where the last few months of potential posts and this album come in.
This may not make sense to a lot of you well-adjusted, non-damaged types, but when your vitality is near-constantly snuffed by the sheer weight of simply being awake, you tend to get nostalgic whenever you relapse back into sadness after long spells of feeling functional. I had been enjoying the shit out of this album for a few months prior to the moment it finally "clicked", and a heap of existential, stress-cigarette pain proved to be the key.
Over the past few days leading up to our glorious alignment of souls, my being was slowly crushed into a little frowny diamond by trigger after trigger, and the fibers of my whole new Patti Labelle attitude started to fray considerably. Finally, a pot-luck/party featuring an unfortunate meet-up of my recent ex-partner and a farm intern I'd become involved with drove the final nail into my coffin of Good Times, and as I drove home that night alone, reunited with the nostalgic shades of despair I'd been in the throes of my whole life, I put this on at a whim and it draped an army blanket over my throbbing psyche.

On The Impossible Past is essentially where the transitional leanings of Chamberlain Waits were heading: the sound is less raucous, with greater reliance on space and melody to make an impact rather than the aforementioned orgcore cliches, and while a largely a lyric-focused release, the melodies have never been stronger. On top of that, the fairly consistent mid-tempo approach makes this one far more appealing for a wider variety of moods, but the anthemic power per square inch is still prevalent as ever. As the title suggests, this album is beautifully caught up in a nostalgic sense of sadness and reverence for the past, and I for three (ha HA! DEFYING EXPECTATIONS) am pretty weak kneed over trite shit like that. Maybe you could tell, though.
Like all prior Menzingers albums, this one has a few weak links, but for whatever reason, it sticks with me far more as a whole than anything they've ever done. I'm uncertain whether the songwriting is split Alkaline Trio/Tegan & Sara-style, but I'm going to assume as much considering nearly every great song on here is fronted by Greg and every underwhelming one is Tom. Either Tom's simply a lesser songwriter, or he drew the short straw consistently, because while "Sculptors And Vandals" is a great track - a highlight, even - "Ava House" and "Freedom Bridge" are both pretty clumsy and lack the hooks necessary to justify their weird anti-climax and non-building repetitiveness, respectively.

Greg's tracks, on the other hand, are uniformly fantastic, from the simple, addictively sparse opener, "Good Things", to the fist-clenching balladry of "Gates",  the mid-song reinvention of "I Can't Seem To Tell"'s central riff, and the best song the band's ever written, "Mexican Guitars". Also particularly interesting is the quasi-cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" from New Skin For The Old Ceremony, entitled "Sun Hotel". If you track down (or youtube) the demo version released on the acoustic cassette, On The Possible Past, you can hear the track evolve from what was essentially a tributary, fairly straight cover with altered lyrics to an entirely separate, full band-performed entity. Unfortunately it's not about Greg ouija board-ing Janis Joplin's ghost into existence for fellatio purposes, though.

I suppose I need to mention the lyrics, though, considering I spent a whole paragraph rambling about the way they affected me in my time of deep, young, important-looking anguish. While there's no cohesive storyline overarching this album, the theme is prevalently backwards-in-time-looking, and recalls minute, but ever-important details of (relatively) hard living and great, fleeting beauty. I know that sounds like every navel gazing pop-punk unit's M.O. in today's climate, but The Menzingers have that something that separates the unpretentious, relatable prose of Dear Landlord and American Steel from the regurgitated nothingness of your Elways and Arms Alofts. For the most part, these are all colorfully illustrated snapshots of grief, significant faces, old friends and the like, and while, admittedly, I could see this sort of sentimentality causing some of you more jaded fucks to cringe, I love lines like this:

It's not hard to fall for a waitress
When you both smoke
Smoke the same cigarettes
You'll get seated as diners or lovers
You'll get the check as friends for the better
You'll carve your names into the Paupack Cliffs
Just read them when you get old enough to know
that happiness is just a moment

 and

Well I sat and thought about you
On the long ride back to Philly
From the way that you'd wear your hair
To the way that you'd laugh when you drank too much
Before the plug was pulled, the fires burned out
And all the parties grew bored
You waited tables
I waited for your shift breaks

And Gin and Casey
Used to dance inside of me
And I bet I sound like a broken record
Every time I open my mouth
I want to wander around the city with you again
Like when you waited tables
And I waited for your shift breaks

 This is the kind of stuff that simultaneously inspires me and makes me wonder if I'm doing myself a disservice by idealizing nostalgia and sadness so heartily. I can't say I'm feeling much remorse though, considering how fist pumpingly anthemic this kind of sentimentality is. Sweet anguish riffage, too.

CONCLUSION: It's still Clash-y, but also a nostalgic, beautifully emoted (albeit Greg's warble can seem a bit overstated sometimes), pop-punk/punk rock/alt-rock hybrid with tons of memorable moments and strong enough songwriting and overall flair to keep me hooked. There are weaker moments, but even those are worth listening to, for once. No "Alpha Kappa Falls Off A Toilet"s or whatever. For once, I really doubt I'll be retracting any praise I've heaped on this band. But MAN! WoUlDn'T iT bE wAcKy If ThE nExT tImE, I ngsjdhssd3r3r

So yeah, check this out.