Artist: The Lawrence Arms
Release: Metropole
Release Date: Out Now
The Lawrence Arms are one of the greatest things to come out of Chicago. Period. They just are. There’s something about three-pieces; ever since The Clash decided to tear what would become the punk scene a new one (and don’t give me that bullshit about The Who; I’m not discounting them and Pete Townshend was an incredible guitarist, but what did they do to advance the genre? Hmm?), they’ve come thick and fast and been either fucking fantastic and far louder than the sum of their parts (Reuben, Great Cynics, Bangers, Caves), or simply fallen by the wayside with four-four chord progressions and flat vocals.
This is where the Lawrence Arms massively excel. And they do it in spades. What’s been repeatedly argued by many a fan of their brand of “Fat Wreck punk rock” (because there’s clearly a distinction – you’ll notice how most of the bands on the label sound very similar) is that Brendan “Bad Sandwich” Kelly and Chris “Sundowner” McCaughan are absolutely incredible singer-songwriters in their own right; and they often use the Lawrence Arms as a creative outlet of sadness, heartache, distress and anger that you don’t see elsewhere. You check out Brendan’s outing with The Wandering Birds or The Falcon; or Chris’ solo stuff under the Sundowner moniker (JACKNIFE! MY STRIFE!), you’ll see how lyrics can envelope you something beautiful. And to be honest, being a fan of Oh! Calcutta! for years, I didn’t actually comprehend the lyrics for “Requiem, Revisited” (aside from “We’ll knock back a few… and talk about life…”) until Kelly revisited it once again for his split with Smoke or Fire frontman Joe McMahon. And it was nothing short of beautiful.
Alas, I digress. I don’t tend to write reviews for people not into the music I’m reviewing, mainly because firstly, I’m drunk, and secondly, there are a few bands I listen to that people don’t want to like or get to grips with for ridiculous reasons – one of which, in this instance, might be that they don’t appreciate the vocal styles of whoever’s warbling the lyrics. I’ve met people who don’t like Sonic Boom Six because “that girl’s voice is terrible.” Someone I met last year couldn’t stand Sam Russo. SAM RUSSO. The thing that tends to stick in any would-be NOFX, Pennywise or Bouncing Souls fan’s craw about the Lawrence Arms is that Brendan Kelly’s distinctive car-crash warped voice is a lot more old-style Gallows or Billy Talent than it is No Use For A Name – which are terrible comparisons in themselves, because I’m not really sure how to describe it. But alas, what people fail to realise is that Kelly has a ridiculous fucking gift. The man can jam out a Dylan-style heartbreak croon with the best of them before letting rip with something barely comprehensible. Often in the same song. And this is why I can take this review exclusively to Lawrence Arms fans when I make the distinction between their previous albums in order to describe just how good Metropole is.
My favourite “proper” album by the Lawrence Arms is Apathy and Exhaustion. My favourite CD by them, however, is Cocktails and Dreams; a mishmash of old EPs and singles that somehow just fits together so well. Not quite The Gold Record well, but bear with me. Arguably, where the first four hard releases; A Guided Tour of Chicago, Ghost Stories, Present Day Memories and the aforementioned Cocktails showcase, albeit rough and ready versions, what the Lawrence Arms are all about – beautifully simple four-four folk punk chord progressions with stabbing bass runs, arpeggio-cum-pentatonic lead licks and ridiculous drum fills; after these releases is where things get interesting: Apathy and Exhaustion showcased such hard-hitting punxxxxx classics as “Porno and Snuff Films,” “The Corpses of Our Motivations” and “Abracadaver,” loud, abrasive fuckoff anthems of tunes that got every small venue anywhere they played screaming along; while at the same time tucking away gems like McCaughan’s poetry-laden Sundowner “cover” “Boatless Booze Cruise Party,” “Your Gravest Words” and “Right As Rain Part 2.” A sort of pattern emerged with Apathy, Brendan handled the party tricks and McCaughan handled the satellites, never getting signals right. And it worked.
The Greatest Story Ever Told didn’t really change the formula; but it did take on more of a mellow tone. Songs like “The Raw and Searing Flesh,” “Chapter 13: A Hero Appears” and “The Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure,” whether helmed mainly by Sundowner or Sandwich, were poetic compositions with an incredible emphasis on lyrical content – and why not? The lyrics were strong and encompassing. Then came what many would call the swansong; Oh! Calcutta!: A brash, destructive smackdown of an album, pausing to take breaths only in the prelude to one of the loudest songs, “Requiem, Revisited,” and the final secret track; the Ode to Warped Tour, “Warped Summer Extravaganza.” Every other song is a fucking salvo of heavy melodic guitars, driven bass and drums that’ll run through you in any live music setting. And even the arguably chilled last song has Kelly ring out something ferocious in the last line; the CD finishing with an inevitably definitive, “MOTHERFUCKER!”
What we can discern from all of these albums isn’t so much how good or terrible they are; no sir – the only reason I felt the need to ramble on for fucking ages is thus; all of the Lawrence Arms albums post-Present Day Memories can be paired in terms of musical style and lyrical content, and it’s not difficult in the slightest. Cocktails bunks with all of the later releases, as it’s a mix of everything. Oh! Calcutta! is arguably the result of someone asking “What would happen if we took what made Apathy and Exhaustion so fucking loud and made an entire album from it?” and since 2006, there has been no proverbial “spiritual successor” to The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Until now.
Enter Metropole, the long-awaited offering by the boys on their first major label outing with Epitaph. And, particularly for their first full-length in eight long years, it does not disappoint. I heard the CD weeks ago, and when trying to explain it to friends would simply use the term, “Greatest Story. On steroids.” From hearing the first two “releases” from the album, “You Are Here” and “Seventeener (17th and 37th),” I could tell this was going to be a poetic Odyssey of sorts; and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Don’t get me wrong, the musical stylings of this neatly succinct three-piece aren’t lost on me; from the brass parping away at the end of “Acheron River” to the seemingly random bagpipes segwaying “Drunk Tweets” into “The YMCA Down The Street From The Clinic,” it’s all here musically. However, just like with Greatest Story, you’re listening out for when Kelly stabs your conscious in the face with a brazen, “You can smell the rats are dying, when the ship starts to sink,” only to have it gracefully unwrapped and your unease exposed to the world with McCaughan’s beautifully simple, “I’m not together, I’m apart.” You might not get what I mean simply by reading that, but seriously, listen to this shit – it really is something of an opus.
“Chilean District” opens the record exactly where “Like A Record Player” left off, the cheers and jeers of a party not unlike the background skirmish at the end of Oh! Calcutta! preceding Neil Hennessy’s salvo of drum fills to usher in a massive vocal trade-off between Kelly and McCaughan: “I dream when I’m sleeping, I’ll sleep when I die.” The short intro shuffles quickly towards the familiar, as “You Are Here,” the first release from the album, gives fans something to smile about and sing along to – and it’s, once again, split almost evenly between the two vocalists; yet mellower and a lot more melodic than, say, Calcutta’s “Cut It Up.” “Hickey Avenue” pays homage to the folk-punk roots of both singer-songwriters, with Hennessy’s flawless military snare providing the backbone for the walking vocal lines; “What are we doin’ here? Nothin’. That’s what’s killin’ me, that’s what’s fuckin’ killin’ me,” dropping down to a stripped-back guitar-and-vocals skit reminiscent of the second chorus of “Necrotism.”
“Seventeener” is definitely the synthetic “regression” piece of the CD; a bluesy lamentation peppered with anecdotes and valvey, jangling lead guitar lines not uncommon on many of the tracks from Apologies, I Have None’s epic, London. “Beautiful Things” is an absolutely fantastic song, purely because of the last lines of the first verse; “We were writers, smoking on the sidewalks; we were lovers, drinking to another song on the jukebox.” It’s fairly simple and effective in its catchy, hook-laden chorus-esque execution, but sometimes, that’s what you need in a song – for it to just be a good song, and “Beautiful Things” delivers just that. I’ve spotted so many references to other bands and songs in “Acheron River,” and I’m completely unsure which were meant to be intentional, but alas – picture 2008-era Gaslight Anthem reinventing “Key to the City,” and you’re about halfway there. Complete with slowed down atmospheric bridge and over-the-top atmospheric cymbals.
The album’s title track is a similarly Gaslight affair, partly because it opens with an intro quite like Senor and the Queen’s “Blue Jeans and White T-shirts.” I’m not sure how intentional this is, either – but it works, especially with McCaughan’s raw vocals and the drop into full band accompanied by Kelly’s growl to kick the song into a noticeably higher gear. “Drunk Tweets” does precisely what it says on the tin – an onslaught of “FUCK YOU,” accounted for by various instances in which Brendan Kelly, growing old ever disgracefully, just outright dislikes people. Which is fine. Think “Corpses of Our Motivations,” and you get the gist. “The YMCA Down The Street From The Clinic” remains my favourite song on the album; partly because, once again, it’s Kelly dropping to a soulful croon of a voice; a Leonard Cohen with a distinctive crack; pouring out exactly what’s happening through clever pentameter and ghostly lead guitar lines; “They say you really die the last time anybody says your name.” It’s the first time Kelly is thoroughly haunting: and that includes his solo offering of “Kiss the Bottle” on the Joe McMahon split Wasted Potential. Plus, anyone who can get away with, “So I write down shitty words, and I sit in titty bars, and I text, and tweet, and look at nudes, and beat off in the dark” can have all of my approval forever.
I daresay “Never Fade Away” is my least favourite song on the album – simply because there had to be one. I find the lyrics somewhat generic in their execution – vague, even – as if you’re hearing a somewhat-pseudo-kind-of-love story but without prior knowledge; which just proves frustrating – a bit like 4ft Fingers’ “Emergency Manoeuvre.” But then again, maybe that’s the point – it stands in contrast to the deeper intricacies of the “Seventeeners” and “Metropoles” of the rest of the album. “I fire, I miss, I fire again” smacks so heavily of the bridge from “Requiem, Revisited,” or the final incendiary conclusion to “Recovering the Opposable Thumb” that I’ve found myself shouting along to in countless road trips – proving that the structure of the song can work. I reckon it’ll grow on me in time – it’s more about picturing it as a part of the album, rather than a single track. “Paradise Shitty” gets back to the folk-punk grind once again, with a throwback to tunes like “Blood Meridian”: “Said my piece, everyone was laughing in my face; safe to say, I hate this place.” Kelly is an absolutely miserable 30-something who “spent too long in one place,” and he’s not even looking for redemption: “take me down to that city where the girls just look… okay.” Another jab (or homage…?) at Axl Rose in the vein of “Lose Your Illusion 1.” It seems that, even twelve years on, the corpses of motivation still hang, if not more cudgeled and fucked up than ever.
Finally, “October Blood” brings everything to a conclusion with its arguably Cocktails and Dreams-esque ending – with elements of “100 Resolutions,” “Necrotism” and even “The Slowest Drink At the Saddest Bar on the Snowiest Day in the Greatest City” to boot – as in. major aspects that made the loud, storytale ballads of that era so fucking good. “I burn on, I burn on; Autumn gold beneath my feet… don’t hold on too hard to the way that everything was. I’m not afraid to fall apart.” It’s almost like they’re giving a sly-yet-classy nod to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, whether beknownst or otherwise – a succinct, freighting painting of a life and all its lessons in less than two minutes. “I was born and then I died; and just a moment went by.”
Metropole, for all its musical and lyrical merits, isn’t exactly anything new from the Chicago triumvirate – it’s hardly same-old, same-old but there’s an unmistakeable Fat Wreck feel about it (for reference, Banner Pilot, Nothington, Screeching Weasel et al are all in the same vein). At the same time, however, there’s definitely something about it that sets it apart structurally: all of the interthreaded sound bites recorded on a mobile phone whilst Kelly stayed at the Metropole in Italy really bring the album into its own. It becomes almost a codex of individual-yet-related tales, almost an epic poem of sorts, strung together by applause, street artists, bagpipes and cat-calls that take the listener to the Mediterranean as if to point out exactly where the CD’s inspiration came from. It manages, at least somewhat, to transform an already strong yet subtle collection of songs into a musical journey – much more Cursive’s I Am Gemini than Bouncing Souls’ Gold Record. And The Gold Record remains one of my favourite albums to date, based purely on the quality of the collection of songs and how they fit together. Metropole is something else – ironically, a somehow greater story than its arguable spiritual predecessor.
Whilst Metropole will, undoubtedly and inevitably, never be the rash introduction to the Lawrence Arms that Oh! Calcutta! became, nor the mellow, almost mature poetic tome that introduced us to another side of the band in the form of The Greatest Story Ever Told; there’s just something about this album that makes it fucking brilliant. It might be that it’s on a major label. It might be that there’s a lot of money behind it. It could be that the band have grown up – and realised that experimenting with different elements whilst retaining their overarching punk-rock-folk-punk structures from yesteryear could open up a whole new chapter for Chicago’s finest. The band approach midlife not like the NOFXs or Aquabats‘ of the world – they’re not trying to stay relevant, current or “punx 4 life.” Tired, but not defeated – clearly, the engine still roars. They’re “strolling, strolling, through this endless parade of identical days.” And for a first release on Epitaph, the band had to deliver – and deliver they did.
You can pick up a copy of Metropole in most places from today. And it’s completely and absolutely worth every penny.
