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Tag: Ska

  • A for Effort E for Attainment By Common Sense Kid

    A for Effort E for Attainment By Common Sense Kid

    Author’s note: This review was originally written to be an album of the year review for 2023. Unfortunately for me, I was unable to release it in a timely fashion. Rather than releasing an album of the year review well into the new year and making it weird, I decided I would instead hold onto it and release it to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the album’s release. So Happy Anniversary, Common Sense Kid! Thanks for crafting my favorite album of 2023.

    Album: A For Effort E For Attainment

    Artist: Common Sense Kid

    Released: March 28, 2023- Ska Punk International

    This is the first full-length release by Common Sense Kid and clearly, he intended to come out of the gate swinging. A For Effort E for Attainment is an innovative and eclectic mix of electronic music, Ska, and Punk. Common Sense Kid pushes the sound envelope of what it means to be a Ska album and succeeds at creating something unique and enjoyable.

    The Album features songs about relationships highs as found in “Here For The Long Haul” which is an upbeat guitar and horn driven song celebrating time spent with a significant other. It also features a song about relationship lows of “Blinded by a Black Hole” where synth-organ punctuates the story of a person finding freedom from an obsessive toxic relationship. As the name suggests, it implodes under its own weight. The song is endlessly catchy. The political message found in “Warning: Dystopia” is my jam. It starts with the POV of the song noticing a Doomsayer on the street holding a sign proclaiming the end is near. The song then goes on to list all the problems that can be seen as the POV walks around his town. Poor folks freezing during the winter, corrupt politicians, and the rich using detraction to fleece the pocket of the same poor folks are all mentioned as problems of dystopia. The last lyrics of the song deliver a twist ending that seems to suggest, that you have to do something to stop this. The twist is also delivered in a deep Boris Karloff like voice that adds a chilling weight to the message that is frankly awesome.  “Let’s Press Reset” is another politically themed song that is more of a sorrowful retrospective of our world’s current problems. It proposes the question that maybe it’s better to start over again. The thing that really sets this song apart from others on the album for me is its clever use of archival recordings of historic radio broadcasts that perfectly coalesce with the lyrics and somber vibes of the music; in a sense saying these are the steps that took us here.  

    This album really offers something for everyone including a flat-out banger techno bop “What is this Techno Stuff” and more songs about guitar maintenance than you would typically expect to find on the average LP release. It is a must listen in my book. I wait on bated breath to see what the future holds for Common Sense Kid. His music is upbeat, catchy, and pushes the cutting edge of modern Ska forward. His lyrics are down to earth, insightful, and in most cases hopeful. A For Effort, E for Attainment is frankly everything I want in an album.

    This review was originally posted on March 28, 2023 on the former LFDH substack.

  • Mutiny by Mutiny

    Mutiny by Mutiny

    Album: Mutiny

    Artist: Mutiny

    Released: February 20, 2024- Ska Punk International

    Spotify

    Mutiny is a band that is the end result of a whole host of musicians from existing bands voltroning together to form a Skacore super band; the like of which the world has never seen before. Mutiny, the album, is the prologue of a science fiction story that spans both bilingual musical performance and print media via a manga. The initial tie-in manga was included in the first pressing of the vinyl album. That sold out almost instantly, so if you didn’t get it, you missed out. This is great for collectability, but ultimately caused me some concern for two reasons. 1) I didn’t get one and 2) having only 300 copies of something is extremely bad for media preservation. Luckily my concerns were put to rest when plans were announced to make the tie-in manga available digitally. This was the most glorious news. Also, I should mention here that the tie-in manga is a prologue for a traditional manga that will release independently of any future music releases.  So, keep an eye out for that.

    The album itself is high energy ska with trashing guitars and sometimes manic, but always killer horn lines. The album opens up with “This Is A Eulogy”. It is clearly an important character beat in the story. Frankly put, killing people’s loved ones through the means of indiscriminate war always makes more people hellbent on fighting you.  The narrator in the song experiences just that. The music and lyrics work to together to make this song an aggressive call to action. It makes me want to grab my laser rifle and comically oversized sword and join the fight. It sets the tone for the rest of the album in an emotionally engaging way. “What A Difference A Year Makes” is the “Seasons Of Love” of the album if the cast of Rent had giant mechs and were extremely pissed at getting bamboozled into fighting a pointless war. The horns go hard, the guitar is fast, the lyrics are gritty and everything comes together with this indignant kind of energy. It is by far my favorite song on the album. The last song on the album is “Theseus” and it is the most theatric of the songs. Throughout the song, each part of the ship calls out as if to announce their support. The culmination of this is the captain declaring that he is the mutineer. This gives heavy “you have my axe” vibes and I think it’s fantastic. A perfect end to this beginning.

    One last thing:  there is Japanese voice over towards the end of “Theseus”. In the Japanese version of the song, it is still in Japanese. My Dora the Explorer addled brain kind of expected it to be in English. Nonetheless, the Japanese half of the album is equally as good as the English half. While it is the same songs performed in Japanese, the vocals are performed by Japanese musicians and recorded in Japan. This adds an additional level of intricacy that makes their inclusion on the album worth it.

    Mutiny is an extremely ambitious project that delivers an amazing musical experience that seamlessly melds Skacore with the story and esthetics of a space opera. If they can deliver an interesting manga, and can put together a mildly theatric stage show, they will have pulled off an epic hat trick. Mutiny has the talent. They have the support of an amazing label in Ska Punk International and the backing of a manga studio in Japan. They have set themselves up for success and I, for one, cannot wait to see how this plays out.

    This review was originally post on March 8, 2024 on the former LFDH substack.