On the same day I received this CD -18 March – the G2 (The Guardian’s daily magazine), printed an article by ex-pat American Caroline Sullivan, who now lives in London. In it, Sullivan generalises greatly and describes British music as “irresponsible, innovative, quirky, piss-taking, unique, brilliant.” She also says that “in the US, it’s always been a point of pride for even local bands to excel at playing their instruments. Professionalism was the goal and everything else – cynicism, irreverence, a coherent fashion sense – was an afterthought”.
I’m not making any of this up, you can read it here – http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2266224,00.html
No Use For A Name – I Want To Be Wrong
While I don’t completely agree with her, she does have a point: the post-punk UK gave us the Slits, The Specials and Joy Division, when the US gave us hardcore. In other words, the US stopped punk being an attitude and made it into a sound. Of course, there are tons of bands to contradict the above statement but fuck it – this is my review, we’re doing it my way.
For arguments sake: when No Use For A Name got together twenty years ago to play speedy, melodic American skate punk, Snuff were getting together to … fuck, that doesn’t work. I got it: Terrorvision, the chart-topping pop-metallers, got together and pushed a quirky, irreverent, irresponsible, piss-taking, unique, brilliant and occasionally innovative sound around the same time as those generic bastards in NUFAN. And while Terrorvision signed to EMI, grew, changed, decided to write more than one song, had a few hit singles, hit hard times and now occasionally regroup for beer money; NUFAN found glory in the US pop scene and did what all US punk bands seem to do when they hit that level – grow stale on their laurels. Beer money has more integrity.
Yes, it’s all here – fast paced, melodic skate punk with vocals harmonising and floating sweetly over the music ala early Fat Wreck. This album will make the cynical of you ask the question – should everybody just give up buying US punk bands albums after the band releases their fourth album? Yes, probably. Unless, y’know, people call them indie and they’re actually punk.
Even if the band are rehashing the same tune for another 14 tracks (after eight albums of the same bloody thing, too. Twice that of the estimated relevance-span), the album kicks off well with the charging and attention-grabbing ‘Biggest Lie’ and ‘I Want To Be Wrong’. By the end of the horrible intro drum sounds of ‘Yours to Destroy” start, the thoughts of “a ninth album with no change?! HOW!?” are already running around manically in your brain, forcing their way to the fore and shouting loudly. You know what you get with NUFAN, through the sweet acoustic number of ‘Sleeping Between Tracks’ and the ever present relentless beats of drummer Rory Koff on almost every track.
I’ve decided that I’m going to rehash this review for every single US punk band, because if they can repeat themselves, I can damned well repeat myself just as much. One day the US punk scene will get some artistic integrity and cynicism. Punk never seemed to me to be about “three chords and the truth”, it was only ever “fuck you.” Go on, ask Sting. He knows.
http://www.punknews.co.uk/review.php?view=view&id=4988&filter=1
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