This thing has not aged well at all. When I was 14-15 and this album first came out I thought it was so funny and shocking. Songs about how smoking makes you cool and being a literal ladykiller. I hadn’t really been exposed to folk-punk before (a genre that I now overall despise) either so the sound was new and exciting. I was getting heavily into Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly at the time so to hear these sort of fast acoustic songs with punk beats and country bass intrigued me.
When I got older, around 18-19 and lived with a bunch of scum*** punks in a basement, we would sometimes get drunk and listen to this album. It was still funny and enjoyable to drink and sing along to. Eventually it got pushed aside like many other albums in place of something else someone showed us. We would go on to listen to so many records and many of us got into vinyl.
We started branching from punk and metal and got into hip hop, jazz, funk, and many other weird genres. Every now and then someone would say “hey I just got the new Andrew Jackson album let’s listen to it.” We always put it on and came to the same conclusion that it wasn’t nearly as fun as the first album.
Eventually we forgot about the band in place of other projects and a desire to find more diverse sounds. I hadn’t heard the name in years until much later after I had moved out that house. I logged into Sputnik.com to find hey had changed their name to AJJ because they thought their name was offensive or some ***.
So the band changes their name and some years go by. I’m now in my mid 20’s. Every album that I heard them do since this one sounded like pseudo-intellectual moral rambling over generic folk songs. I started to hate the band but still had a soft spot for the first record.
Even more years go by and I decide to revisit the album only to find that it might actually be worse than all these other preachy albums they have been putting out. This thing has aged worse than an avocado. It isn’t funny, it isn’t clever, it isn’t even fun. They are void of nuance and subtlety and really only attract the lowest common denominator when it comes to both folk and punk simultaneously.
I have been listening to this album for years now and recently have played it about half a dozen times. This band ***ing blows. I initially gave this a way to generous 4.5/5 but now I feel embarrassed to have even spent this much time writing this crap review for them, let alone listening to their records multiple times. The only song that still gets me going is “Be Afraid of Jesus.” They think they are trying to be honest and real but they always come off fake and phoney. AJJ are derivative and obnoxiously unoriginal. They are always reaching for attention, reaction, and relevance... none of which should be granted to such a amateurish and juvenile group of musicians.
