Review Summary: For the kids who aren't afraid to embrace their stereotypes.
Musicians write and play music for a lot of reasons. Some people do it to create something beautiful. Some people do it to send a message. Some do it to make people think. But some do it just because their lives are full of the typical bull*** we all deal with - the only difference is they want to have fun every once in a while.
Once upon a time, the Alkaline Trio fit into that category, and that time would be around 2001. It was before Good Mourning, before Derek Grant (their drummer that would last the rest of their career), before lead singer/guitarist Matt Skiba started putting his David Lynch obsession into his music, before writing songs about the Manson family and the Donner Party - basically before the insanity set in. But it’s after the punk gems of Goddammit and Maybe I’ll Catch Fire, albums that buried heartbreak under anything that sounded like a glorified demo and went along with it. It's From Here to Infirmary, the album that bisects their career.
The sound is closer to a straight-up rock sound (something they would explore again much later in their career with Agony & Irony), with subject matter somewhere between the poisoned bubble of adolescence and the absurd darkness of adult life. It doesn’t sound like a transition album, though, and that’s because on Infirmary, Alkaline Trio aren’t doing anything different - they’re tapping into what’s happening in their everyday lives and putting it on a record. It’s still them.
And it’s hard not to sympathize with these grown-up kids. Consider the relatable extended metaphors behind “Private Eye” and “Mr. Chainsaw,” or the triumphant regret behind “Stupid Kid” and “Armageddon.” They sound like words we might have wished we came up with when the time was right. And there’s some legitimate lament behind singer/bassist Dan Andriano’s tracks as well. “I’m Dying Tomorrow” is a rollicking anthem for making the best of your time, and the character Andriano describes in “Another Innocent Girl” seems as real to me as the speaker singing any of the other songs on the album. There is more than a slight gloss of cliche covering the album (“Did I remember to stay up late/drinking for the fun/singing for the taste?” and “What they say of the grass on the other side’s true/Too much time looking up is turning everything blue/including me/including you,” just to name two), but cliche is free to roam on familiar ground, when we’re singing about problems that suburban high schoolers find legitimate. But these guys really mean it when they play. The instrumentation is honest, making little use of overdubs and sounding as energetic as possible.
There are a few experiments with song structure. “Bloodied Up” has a hardcore pop-punk outro, “Stupid Kid” can kick it into double time, and the album closer, “Crawl,” even tries its hand at a delicate ending to the album (well, as delicate as this trio can get). But other than that, when it comes to this album, what you see is what you get. It’s certainly nothing you haven’t heard before, but that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. It’s actually quite good for what it is. It’s like Skiba sings at the end of “Mr. Chainsaw” right before he leaves us to take on the next song: “In case you’re wondering, I’m singing/about growing up, about giving in.” That’s the thesis of the album, right there, even if no one is wondering in the first place, because what else do punk bands sing about nowadays? Consider it the junk food of punk rock. Know that it’s cheesy and sappy and angsty and angry, but listen to it anyway. Because sometimes you need a little bit of that in your life.
