Woke up and started my day with the ridiculously earnest but crack-like addictiveness of Life In General by MXPX(1995). It covers 17 tracks in about 40 minutes, yeah I listened twice, and every moment is a hook. I honestly can't help but to sing along even with some pretty inane high school aged lyrics(hell they probably sound corny to today's high schoolers). The album is wide eyed, youthful honesty that only comes at that age where perspective(and, thankfully jaded cynacism as well) is nowhere to be found but life's reality is starting to creep in.
I have to laugh when I hear a 19 year old Mike Herrera sing "in my younger years, I used to be so free, now I don't know, whats happening to me". He must have been writing for the 2012 nostalgia tour without knowing it.
It got me thinking about other guilty pleasures and underrated pop/punk albums.
I would submit Schatzi's Death of the Alphabet is criminally ignored and sounds great today 10 years after its release.
The Austin based band never really got it together after this album and its too bad, they were better than all the bands of this era that did make it.
Plus 44 was the Blink 182 off shoot featuring Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker.
When your Heart Stops Beating is just excellent from start to finish. A flirtation with a more electronic sound(and an additional female vocalist) left this album with strange and unfocused marketing effort and it was merely a blip in 2006.
That said, when taken as a whole it is a better album than any other Blink side project or off shoot and vastly superior to last years effort from the (grudgingly)reformed Blink.
Varied styles, dark lyrics and sound and, of course, brutal drumming from Barker make this a minor classic in the genre in my book.
Speaking of young punk bands, the Orwells are getting a lot of play and quite a few hip endorsements. They are pretty solid, but the songs sound pasted together with a 'lets sound like that, on this one' approach. The real band to watch, even if it is for their eventual and assured implosion, is Fidlar.
With unabashed references to drinking, drugs and general debauchery in nearly every verse and chorus this is the kind of fun beach party punk that always makes me want to move back to California.
Wake, Bake Skate, No Waves, No Ass(Where they make distortion sound like a horn section) and Oh are my early favorite singles. They all have a definite fuzzed out, Cali-surf punk feel to them. Strongly reminiscent of Wavves, but already with tighter structures than the first Wavves album and an endearing lack of regard for saying the right thing. Think early Supergrass(or Libertines) with a dash of Ramones and a lot of sand thrown in.
Lyrics like: "I feel, feel like a cokehead...I feel like shootin up, feel like givin' up...Feel like Im already 80 years old, its gettin so cold, I need a new body and I need a new soul..." laid over a manic beach guitar, fuzz and some handclaps...I close my eyes and I'm passed out in a sunny California alley already. The beauty of music! Good morning.
