I am very afraid
that Atlantic Aftermath is no more. There have not been any Twitter or Facebook
updates for months, and the main page is a bunch of SQL errors. However, they
are still listed as following me on Twitter, I believe it happened more
recently than their last tweet based on their position in the queue, and I
listened to them, so I am going to review them! Fortunately, they were pretty
good.
They describe
themselves as heartfelt pop punk. I'm not arguing that, but I feel like it
falls more on the punk side. I say this because listening to them made me
suddenly want to listen to the Dead Milkmen. Also, there is that spirit of punk
that I first started thinking about with the Ramones. Things suck a lot in the
songs, but the music feels good. The anger may be there, but the humor wins and
goes all literate.
The lyrics are
smart, and yet with titles like "Expand Your Brocabulary", they don't
seem to take themselves too seriously. My only real objection is to the use of
"whore" in "Johnny X-Treme", as I have been uncomfortably
aware lately of how the word is used as part of the patriarchal suppression of
women, but I will concede that it makes sense in the context.
Musically they are
powerful, with strong guitars, aggressive percussion, and frequent singing in
unison. "Save The Breakdown, Save The World" and "Bi-Curious
George" are good examples of this. I often feel like there are multiple
levels going on in the songs. That is true of "Hey Arnold" which may
work as an homage to The Warriors, but not as only that.
So, I hope that
Atlantic Aftermath is in fact still around, if for no other reason than that
surely a band with a song called "Never Say No To Panda" really
should do some version of Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways".
Either way, music
is available via Amazon and iTunes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment