Hold On
From A Poet’s Life

One of the most difficult questions for me to answer in recent years is What’s your favorite band of all time? There are a lot of bands who have had a lot of impact in my life. As I get older, I gravitate toward a much easier sound. The bands I have followed for the last decade or so are downright soft. A couple of these softer bands not only get regular rotation, but manage to create music that I identify with better than any other music I’ve ever listened to.

But one band started the whole thing. My music addiction can be traced directly to Operation Ivy.

No matter how far away I move from the rebellious scene of my youth, I have yet to move away from anything and everyone connected to OpIvy. In the wake of their brake-up, Rancid became my favorite punk band. I bought everything even remotely related, from Auntie Christ to Dance Hall Crashers. I even went through an obligatory ska phase after high school.

Well, I’m not punk anymore. Not even close. But I still find myself keeping tabs to the Ivy kids. The latest installment is a solo album by Tim Armstrong. It’s his standard brand of ska-punk, leaning way more ska than usual. I can’t get enough.

When it comes right down to it, Operation Ivy really is my favorite band of all time.

Sheep In Your Head
From Miss Your Face

My first thought when I heard this: Woah. Where did that come from?

This album is shockingly good for a band that doesn’t get national attention. These cats just know how to make solid rock and roll. It’s just a bit harder than your run-of-the-mill indie rock and less pretentious than modern emo. It’s not ground-breaking, but it isn’t trying to be. It’s just good, new-fashioned rock. When we’re old, grey, and thinking about retirement, the “classic” radio stations will play music that sounds just like this.

The Transit War has gotten some airtime on mtvU, which may or may not help their long-term exposure. More importantly, their line-up seems to have solidified (always a necessity when you’re looking for a larger audience). Miss Your Face not only benefits from a stable group, the production has been ramped up. The music has a great mix of small-venue sensibility (like the obligatory sing-along) and stadium-sized intuition (like guitar solos). As a package, they have all the ingredients for success.

To be totally honest, they might be about three years too late. Had this album been released when Jimmy Eat World was getting airplay with Sweetness and when Jason Schwartzman was still drumming for Phantom Planet, The Transit War would have been signed to EMI or Dreamworks before the ink was dry on the cover art.

Speaking of cover art, there’s something else the Transit War is doing right. This cover is intensely interesting. I keep looking at it, caught somewhere between “I don’t understand” and “I don’t want to understand.” It’s a simple, powerful image that resembles almost no other cover I’ve ever seen. A+ guys. Good job.

Anyways, this is a great album and you can hear how close these kids are to greatness.

No Money
From Get Evens

I’m on a permanent Fugazi kick. Every once in a while, I’ll put on In on the Kill Taker or 13 Songs because I just can’t find anything else to listen to and I’ll end up listening to only Fugazi for three days. I don’t follow the band like I used to, so when I found out the Fugazi kids are on indefinite hiatus, I was torn between a basic feeling of loss and the thought, “Hey, they deserve it after 15 years of touring.”

I heard that they were on hiatus when I learned that Ian MacKaye got together with Amy Farina of The Warmers to create the Evens. More than being a departure from the Minor Threat/Pailhead/Fugazi sound for which MacKay is famous, the Evens bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to his former outfits (other than his signature voice). Maybe I’m getting old, but I found it totally refreshing.

To be honest, The Evens aren’t quite as good as I wanted them to be, but they are twice as interesting as I expected. Most surprising: a children’s song recorded for Pancake Mountain. We know were getting old when the rock stars we grew up with are recording children’s music. I don’t mind. I just wonder which punk rock outfit will be serenading our grandchildren.

At any rate, The Evens sophomore effort is a success. It’s like easy listening for MMR fans. And unless Fugazi plans on touring any time soon (which I highly doubt), I’m sure we’ll see album number three by the end of next year.

New Noise
From The Shape of Punk to Come

This is the best punk song ever recorded. More than being the culmination of all punk music before it, Refused simply destroyed the future of punk music by pushing it as far as it could possibly go before it had no choice but to evolve into a new genre.

I was roundly mocked when I said that in 1998, but 8 years later I still think I’m right. New Noise delivers exactly what it promises: a new noise. Using every punk trick in the book combined with just the right amount of modern production, no other band has been able to create anything quite like this song. Newer punk outfits like (+44) have to settle for sounding “old school,” modern hardcore has evolved and is now refered to almost exclusively as “metal,” and even the kids at Victory Records are wearing make-up. With The Shape of Punk to Come and particularly with New Noise, Refused drew a line in the sand and marked the evolution point in the entire punk movement.

The reason this song sounds surprisingly modern 8 years after it was recorded is not because Refused was “ahead of their time.” Put simply, Rufused is the time.

That sounds like a tall order and probably like I’m full of crap, but I’m not. I’m a genius.