Guitars, Drums, Tones, and Saxophones

Slapstick - s/t

This week here at GDTS World HQ, I’m doing a “theme week.” Yes, I feel like I can do such a thing. What’samatter with that? So it’s Chicago Week here, wherein I will talk about awesome albums from the Chicago scene. And I’ll kick off the series with the self-titled collection from Chicago ska-punk kids Slapstick.

Maybe you don’t know Slapstick. You might have heard of them, but don’t really know what they did. That’s fine; in their lifetime, they only recorded 25 songs, all of which are collected on this album. This is a posthumous career compilation; the band called it quits in 1996.

Many of the members of Slapstick have continued on to other, more successful projects: vocalist Brendan Kelly formed the Broadways, and later the Lawrence Arms; trombone player Pete Anna would find himself in Less Than Jake; and bassist Dan Andriano would find fame in an outfit called the Alkaline Trio. Wikipedia has a more complete family tree.

But you’re saying: “So the members went on to bigger and better things. What about Slapstick itself?” Well, Slapstick was awesome. The songs here are great, memorable ska tunes with that often show what Brendan would later go on to achieve with his later projects. The album opens with the excellent “There’s a Metal Head in the Parking Lot.” Brendan’s vocals are notably young-sounding, but he still has touches of his trademark gruffness. The band is tight and energetic throughout, and the recording is surprisngly clean and professional sounding, particularly for a band that never really saw a lot of commercial success in their time together.

The general sound of the band should be pretty familiar to anyone who was into 3rd wave ska. The songs come fast and furious, and there are a LOT of them. At 25 tracks, even with them being fairly short ska-punk numbers, the album is quite long. Particularly if years of listening to punk rock has left you with the attention span of a gnat. It happens. Thankfully, the songs are all pretty killer. In particular, I quite like their cover of the classic “Earth Angel.” Also, “Almost Punk Enough,” and “Eighteen” are definite stand outs.

So who would like this album? Well, if you enjoy 3rd wave ska-punk, you’ll dig this. Pretty much if you like the bands signed to Asian Man Records (I think most particularly Less Than Jake’s first LP, Pezcore) you will like Slapshot. And Brendan Kelly fans should probably own this. The man seems unable to do wrong!

Tags: slapstick