Guitars, Drums, Tones, and Saxophones

The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem

My dad called me up to tell me that Liam Clancy, the last surviving original member of the Clancy Brothers, died today. Liam was perhaps my favorite singer of all time. If you haven’t heard The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem’s In Person at Carnegie Hall, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. It shows the foursome at its finest, before a live audience.

This is really sad to hear. Liam made some wonderful music, as part of the group and solo, and he will be missed.

Have a strong pint for one of Ireland’s finest troubadours.

Further reading: NPR’s story on Liam.

Teenage Bottlerocket - They Came From the Shadows

Teenage Bottlerocket, hailing from Laramie, Wyoming, are the current standard-bearers for Ramones-core pop-punk. There’s pretty much no band out there who does it quite as well as these four guys. And now they’ve been signed to punk juggernaut, Fat Wreck Chords.

Happily, the jump from Red Scare to Fat hasn’t really impacted the band’s sound at all, at least not negatively. They sound tight as ever here, cranking out 2-3 minute pop-punk anthems left and right. “Skate or Die” delves a bit into skatepunk territory, as would befit such a song, and showcases perhaps a bit more bravado in the lyrics than the band’s previously been known for. This comes to a head in “Bigger Than KISS,” where the band boasts- tongue, one assumes, firmly planted in cheek- that they’re “gonna go down in history as world’s greatest rock ‘n roll band.” Great song, perhaps unless you’re a diehard KISS fan. Who can’t chuckle at the closing line “Ray beat the piss/outta Peter Criss/Now we’re bigger than KISS?”

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Cobra Skulls - American Rubicon

Nevada’s own Cobra Skulls are back, with a new full-length in 2009. Sitting Army was a fantastic effort, and has come to be one of my favorites of the past few years. Can the lightning strike twice? Especially on a 17-song album, in which only one song title contains the words “Cobra” or “Skull?” (“I Used to Like Them Better When They Put ‘Cobra’ In the Titles,” a roughly 30 second instrumental)

Well, the album winds up with “Time and Pressure,” and after a slow intro, the song is a quick-paced punk number that seems like a logical extension to the Sitting Army material. So far so good!

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The Toasters ft. Coolie Ranx

This past Saturday, the Ska is Dead! tour found itself, once again, at Showcase Live! in Foxboro, MA. For those familiar with the Boston area, we who live in Boston find this annoyingly out of the way. I’m spoiled, as I can bike to the Middle East in about 10 minutes. So driving 45 minutes to a show is pretty much something I moved to Boston in order to not have to do anymore.

But I digress.

The line-up this year was:

• The Boston Jolly Pirates
• The Brunt of It
• Hub City Stompers
• Deal’s Gone Bad
• Pilfers
• Voodoo Glow Skulls
• The Toasters
• Mustard Plug

Solid line-up, and a person into the ska scene would probably find little to complain about here. I didn’t, anyway.

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Yeah, this blog has fallen into bad disrepair. But I am going to bring it back to the juggernaut you all know and love. I still have music to gush over in a fanboyish manner! Such as:

• Teenage Bottlerocket – They Came From the Shadows
• Cobra Skulls – American Rubicon
• Chuck Ragan – Gold Country
• The Tim Version – Decline of the Southern Gentleman
• The Lawrence Arms – Buttsweat and Tears 7″
• and more!

So yeah, stay tuned, true believers. Excelsior!

Nothington - Roads, Bridges, & Ruins

So here we are again with Nothington. Jay Northington, ex-Tsunami Bomb, leads his new band through a new album, and let me tell you right now, it’s a winner. If you liked All In, you should already have this album and have played it many, many times. And if you didn’t like All In, don’t fret; there’s a lot here that’s improved from its already excellent predecessor.

There’s no sophomore slump here; the band rips it up, and steps up the game from All In in an immediately noticeable way. Clocking in at 33 minutes, the band uses every second of that running time to its benefit, making these 10 songs all distinct, yet cohesive, and of course, catchy as all get out.

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Parasites - Solitary

My first exposure to Dave Parasite and his rotating cast of characters was on the recent Pop-Punk’s Not Dead! compilation he put together. It had the Ergs!, the Queers, Teenage Bottlerocket, the Unloveables, and of course, Parasites. As I got more and more into pop-punk, Parasites kept coming up, but I was too distracted by both scouring the classics (MTX! Sicko! Screeching Weasel!) and the new music coming from the pop-punk revival (The Ergs! Teenage Bottlerocket! The Sidekicks!).

So, finally, I grab their latest album and give it a listen.

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Nothington - All In

OK, so I somehow missed out on this band until just recently. I’m not really sure how, honestly. Last.fm has been recommending them to be for a long time now, and I keep seeing their music come up on Punknews. At any rate, I finally got around to checking out their debut album, released in 2007 on BYO.

And despite the fact that none of my friends would listen to anything like this, I am disappointed in them, because they did not tell me about Nothington.

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North Lincoln - Midwestern Blood

This is an album I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while, but just never got around to. I’d heard North Lincoln on various comps and mixes people have made for a few years, but never really explored the band’s catalog, despite enjoying what I’d heard. So now, in 2009, they’ve got this here new album (though, according to the Punknews review, it was actually recorded in 2007), so what better time than now?

Kicking things off with the anthemic, soaring “My Summer Spent Indoors,” the band almost immediately kicks it up with the tuneful yet gritty punk rock that they’ve been perfecting over the years. After listening to a few songs, it should come as no surprise that this album was released by No Idea Records. The Gainesville-based label makes perfect sense for this record. On my first listen, I commented a few times to myself that in particular the lead singer often sounded like he was really trying to channel both Chris Wollard and Chuck Ragan. Hey, if you’re gonna emulate any singers, those aren’t bad choices.

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The Sidekicks - Weight of Air

OK, so it’s been a month since the last time we met here. I’d say we were hard at work here at GDTS Command Center, but that would be an awful lie. So instead of making excuses, I’ll ask you to forgive my laziness and jump right back into it.

The Sidekicks are a young band from Cleveland, whose debut So Long, Soggy Dog is a strong addition to the hit-factory that is Red Scare Industries. This is not hyperbole, as I personally think everything Toby releases is gold. I mean, come on, they’ve released records by Teenage Bottlerocket, the Falcon, Sundowner, the Menzingers, Cobra Skulls, and others. Quality.

So here, the boys go for the follow-up to a lauded debut. Dark voices whisper “sophomore slump.” But those voices can shove it because Weight of Air is pretty awesome.

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