Review Summary: Forgettable Beginnings, Same Principles
A record that, no doubt, the artists are ashamed of. AJJ, originally Andrew Jackson Jihad, are one of the biggest anomolies in punk music. The best way I'd describe them is a more political and justified continuation of the sound John Darnielle invented. This album gave an introduction to frontman Sean Bonnette's trademark acoustic strumming style. Something he adopted from The Mountain Goats but re-purposed it to match his aggressive lyrical direction.
These songs are an embarrassing launching point, laying out Sean's way of writing that he uses to this day. In this regard, the biggest way this record stands out in their discography is that it uses shock value to it's advantage, which has been a lyrical strategy in punk as long as the genre has existed.
The theme of using offensive lyrics is the centerpoint of several songs here, like "Jesus" for example, which is a straightforward story about Sean dreaming of mutilating the Baby Jesus as a joke, and then the baby tells Sean he's going to burn in hell. Another is "Scenesters" which can be perceived as a diss track to the Shins, The Microphones, the genre of Post-Hardcore, and all their fanbases. "*** White People" is a self-explanatory joke track. "Daddy Didn't Love Me" is a comedic story about Sean being sexually and physically assaulted by his father and then eventually thanks him for it, because he became a millionaire and the president. Which is a clear commentary on people who justify parental abuse because the kids grow up to do great things in their lives.
"God Made Dirt" is a pretty tryhard-edgy song using religious imagery. "I Love You" is the album's most well known song, which follows the framework of "cheery sounding song with explicit vulgar lyrics", and includes jokes about beating dogs with rocks, and lesbians. "Lady Killer" is a "play on words" song about being a murderer. "Most Aborted Father" is a ridiculous story about being a cigarette getting smoked. The closer "Dylan Cook" is a fun little party track where the chorus is "you don't want to *** with me".
I'd call this their most authentically "punk rock" album. It checks all the boxes that their other albums do, but what makes this different is how raw and bare bones it is. Don't get me wrong, there's clearly some sweat and tears put into engineering this to sound up to an album-quality standard, while still sounding so gritty. It sounds like they had fire in their hearts and urgently needed to record these songs, while still doing the bare minimum requirements for a listenable recording. After this, they never came back to this minimal folk punk sound on a full album, and became an indie rock fusion group.
This was one of the first full albums I heard by this band and it made a lasting impression on me. It's not as good as their later albums, but it serves to validate their authenticity as songwriters. The band hates this record, despite their musical goals remaining the same throughout all these years. It has Sean's thought provoking messages, punk attitude, raw indie production, religious imagery and one of a kind personality that makes them so unique in a world of narrow-sighted hardcore groups.
