Words by Jim Testa
Jim Testa founded the highly influential zine, Jersey Beat in 1982 which he continues to edit to this day. Through writing for his own publication and a number of other outlets, including as a staff writer for Hudson County’s Jersey Journal, he has championed local, regional and national up-and-coming bands. Punk has always shunned credentials, but rest assured that Jim won’t lead you astray.
GRAND SLAMS
UNICORN DOGS – Closer to Death (self-released)
After releasing a slew of excellent singles and EP’s over the last few years, Baltimore’s Unicorn Dogs round the bases with their first album, 16 tracks of fuzzy pop-punk (including two covers). Craggy-voiced guitarist Lucas Carscadden and bassist Jon Moser split lead vocal duties, with Moser’s son Oliver on drums. Best known for their years in Charlie Brown Gets a Valentine, Carscadden and Moser write, play, and sing together with one mind, never wasting a second as these tracks fly past the listener at around two minutes and change (or less). While the music tends to be misleadingly messy, the band’s tight as a drum and the lyrics are always worth a gander. Closer To Death is very much a concept album; mortality, human frailty, and the futility of life recur as themes. On his tracks, Lucas rants about his mid-life crisis (“I don’t have a bucket list, just a lot of things I want to quit,”) and regret (“Got Spoons?”), tells someone to go to hell, and “comforts” us with the advice that “you can get used to anything – and I got used to it.”
Jon Moser’s songs aren’t any cheerier: “Hallucination Free” rails against a world of fake news (“can’t tell what’s conspiracy and that’s just embarrassing,”) “Bogus Journey” sets unrelenting nihilism to a catchy pop-punk melody (“whether you’re a king or a street sweeper, sooner or later you dance with the reaper,”) and the closest thing to God is the notion that “Someone Is Always Paying Attention” – and waiting for you to make a mistake and take you down. So yeah, life is nasty, mean, brutal and short, while the songs are short but catchy and bouncy, seemingly shambolic but tight and focused underneath the distortion. I just hope young Oliver doesn’t get a complex.
HOME RUNS
THE SOMETHING AIN’T RIGHTS – Rotten in the Brain (Hovercraft)
This is not your typical punk album. Instead, picture a hillbilly hootenanny playing Tom Waits’ dive bar jazz, way too much whiskey, pot and cigarettes getting passed around, and some local who thinks he’s Frank Zappa on lead guitar. Such is the inspired lunacy of the Something Ain’t Rights from Astoria, Oregon, a town where Hollywood came to film The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop and Free Willy.
Every track runs amuck – there are nine of ‘em, all really short – with strummin’ and pickin’ and crazy bass lines and dirty drums and vocals that sound like Satan’s righthand man commandeered a CB Radio. The riffs and melodies crash and collide and everything jumps with a spirited country swing. One minute everybody’s going crazy on the dance floor doing the “Melt Melt,” then the band switches gears with “Spineless Men In Masks,” a load of political buckshot aimed straight at ICE. Mostly, though, it’s about gettin’ down and goin’ crazy – “Rotten in the Brain,” “Plymouths of Fury,” “Shot At” – good ol’ country music storytelling with a bad attitude and a punk rock sensibility.
THE SLEIGHTS – Don’t Worry! It Will All Be Over Soon (Rad Girlfriend)
Punk rock lifers from Colorado Springs, The Sleights have turned on the afterburners of late, as frontman Luke Blanton decided to stop booking and managing other bands and focus on his own. That’s a good thing, especially for anyone into that melodic hardcore sound that’s spread from coast to coast, from Jersey’s Bouncing Souls to the hordes of flannel-shirted, wallet-chained beardos at The Fest every year. A lot of this stuff can get one-dimensional, but not so The Sleights, who add twang on “After All,” rev up to hardcore tempo with “Drowning,” add more melody and riffs on “Traffic Lights,” and go for that brawny Chicago punk sound with some whoah-oh-oh’s and ba-ba-baa’s (“Empty Head”). There’s the obligatory tour song (“Breakfast”) but I really like “The Void,” which brings the band’s pop-punk tendencies to the fore. A very solid outing from an old reliable.
AMONG LEGENDS – Lose My Grip (self-released)
Among Legends play not-quite-hardcore punk with political lyrics and a surfeit of anger and aggression. Hailing from Waterloo, Ontario, the band stripped down from a quintet to a trio since forming but haven’t lost an iota of power. Everyone sings, which adds variety and depth (and some awesome group vocals,) and for a one-guitar band, Among Legends can roar like half of Epitaph’s 1995 lineup playing at once. Some of the tracks inject more pop-punk melody, others just go for a blaring roar. There’s a little of Bad Religion’s melodic hardcore, and the lyrics bristle with slogans, manifestos, hard-won introspection, and no-shit straight talk when it’s needed or deserved (“Band Dudes Fuck Off” should be a pamphlet). Then there’s “Oversaturated,” nothing less than a short story about the beginnings of a friendship or romantic relationship, that raises the bar all around – melody, power, and intimacy in one song. Wow. Visit the Bandcamp page if you want to stream and read the lyrics, but they have vinyl and stuff at their own website.
SINGLES
THE UNDERBITES – “Modern Times” (I Buy Records)
NYC’s Underbites fly the pop punk flag in a city where that scene has all but died, so “Modern Times” – the third single from September’s Out of Control – arrives as a welcome jolt, mashing the fast, catchy punk of The Buzzcocks with the ripped-from-the-headlines urgency of The Clash. While the band’s last single, “The Ruling Class,” ranted against income and class inequality, “Modern Times” addresses what we all feel – the daily crush of headlines, disasters, economic uncertainty, climate change catastrophe, and political buffoonery. “I just wasn’t made for these times,” wails front man Jon Fox, and he’s not missing the past, he’s addressing the madhouse we live in today. You get verse, chorus, bridge, and a big catchy hook, guitars that churn like The Queers, and a singer who’s equal parts moxie and heart, all in 2:24. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.