Review Summary: Flordia's Against Me! have been prying into the punk playists for four years now, and their third studio release titled Searching for a Former Clarity is a continuation on their unique take on punk, folk and hard rock crammed into a ball and rolled at hig
Some say when Sid Vicious died in 1979, both punk music and the idea of being an independent and angry artist went with him. The day Sid Vicious died was a music landmark not for it's succession in establishing anything but for the end of a furious, influential and beautiful in it's own twisted way. Yes, it was a fateful day when Sid died. But musicians with lives refuse to believe punk is dead because some drug-addled lowlife who could barely keep the rhythm to even the simplist songs died. The eighties showed us that hardcore punk music could be melded into an art form, the nineties saw a pop-punk revival in the vein of the
Ramones and
Descendents.
Let's stop our merry go round and a little Florida based band called Against Me!. Signing on to Fat Wreck Chords, a famous indie label established by pop punk giants
NOFX, proved to be a very good move. Their folk roots established by front man Tom Gabel made a living on as a teenageer. Their first full album, Reinventing Axl Rose, was a punk album with as much punch as Mike Tyson™ but also with a softer, more stabilized side. Their follow up The Eternal Cowboy made love, lust and violence it's priorities and the music was more punk fueled than anyone would hope. Now we have their 2005 release, which I will tell you about in the following paragraphs.
Againt Me! - Searching for a Former Clarity (2005)
The Players:
Tom Gabel - Vocals, Guitar
James Bowman - Guitar, Backing Vocals
Andrew Seward - Bass, Backing Vocals
Warren Oakes -Drums, Percussion
For this release, the gentlemen known as Against Me! have again taken their approach to punk even further for this release. Aggressive, angst-ridden and even filled with messages, this is Against Me's most aggressive release yet. Though not always openly expressed through brute force, their feelings and emotions can be transmitted through purring songs that are stretched to the point of brutality or limited to a very torturous length.
Let's take a pause at "purring songs", though. When I read this statement I immediately think of the album's highlight, the five minute plus
Violence. Though the length can seem intimidating, especially to those familiar with Against Me!, this show is perfectly timed to be memorable without being too tedious and can be established as an impressionist for the album. The thumping drums, the slow, tortured rumble of the bass and the horrificily powerful shouts of Tom are nothing short of breathtaking not for the fact that all of these qualities sound as amazing as they do, but also the fact that the band keeps on layering tormented and distorted guitars over the steadily flowing rhythm section and Tom's yelling. Though on paper this doesn't seem all that spectacular, this song is the perfect combination of twisted beauty and straightforward songwriting that doesn't get at all boring. The lyrics, though horribly graphic, are brilliant in their own way, perhaps in the way that they tell a beautiful story through the lines, even "When you wake up screaming through a slit throat, your flesh is searing on a twin mattress" sounds achingly glacial and revealed. This song can't really be compared to any others because, though there are no bad or even decent songs on this album, this album is so epic that everything else seems insignificant. However, the song that most resembles the skipping-stone ways of
Violence is also breathtaking, if only to a certain extent.
Even At Our Worst We Are Still Better Than Most is a more guitar oriented song, but it's slow and trudging pace teamed up with some gorgeous chord work and chaotic yelling a simply make a great song in the same vein as
Violence but just taken down a notch passion-wise.
But what's a punk album without punk songs? Right away, the album kicks off with a classic fist-pumper, named after the guys' home town,
Miami. Though it starts off simple enough with it's House of the Rising Sun style guitar opening, the song kicks into high gear with it's demanding power chords gradually making it's way into your brain and shaking it remoreslessly and Tom's fractured yelling giving the song a not-so-sorely needed power boost. After the fist pumping chorus, with it's frequent cries of "Miami!" being heard from all over the place one gets the feel of a standard hard rock song, but the song quickly morphs into hard-ska with it's addition of horns. Not really a musical chameleon but it's interesting to hear the transisitions nevertheless. Really the song I can tie this to is the filled-to-the-brim head-knodder aptly titled
Holy Sh*t! is slower and takes on a more standard rock feel by the middle, but this song is true to it's roots with it's sly addition of acoustic guitar and it's aptly used dueling vocal performances that symbolize the struggle of the band's foremen to stay at the top of their game. The punk songs display Against Me!'s raw brutality not because they have distortion, thundering drums and striking vocals but because the band manages to pull them off so well while keeping their undeniable passion and not substituting it for blunt anger.
What this album does to me is not only represent what's right with punk today, but it's ability to remain variable while staying true to it's folk and punk roots in seemingly every song.
Unprotected Sex with Multiple Partners, for example, is a really an electric folk song with a dark aura banketed over a slowely played hardcore song, and while the result is nice it doesn't seem to fully embrace Against Me!'s, two sides very well. Thus the album's main flaw is that songs don't really take on the full AM! feel, and end up sounding somewhat (but not completely) shallow and thoughtless. Most of these songs, like the hearty relationship song
Pretty Girls (The Mover), are only mildly enjoyable at the beginning while in the middle making an abrupt right and taking things down the other path. Yes, this is for the most part a bad thing, but it becomes clear on the epic title track finale, that things good things have to ignore musical segregation. This strictly modern-electric folk song is a breathtaking group effort by the boys. It's really this song that is extremely moving and the album's final testement, but happilly not the band's.
In my extremely humble opinion, this is truly a modern classic not just for punk but for pop music as a whole. Against Me! have kept their originality over the course of three albums and this is a proud example of why they could be deemed one of the best punk bands around. Influnced and very powerful, sly and sophisticated, subtle and loud this album has all the elements that make punk albums appealable to me. Yes, some might describe this as washed up screamo or watered down hardcore but this album is more than those. It has heart underneath all the brawn and armour, and though the heart shines mostly on the slower more glacial songs it also peeps under in the band's fiery passion for music and making a statement that punk isn't dead - it's just middle aged.
