Hola, kids.
Back into the work week we go.
Yesterday I wrote a short bit about how great Joey Cape's solo debut is while only barely mentioning his career with Lagwagon. What I may not have expressed fully in that brief aside is the simple fact that I love Lagwagon. Not to the extent of my obsessions with Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins, mind you, but in a simpler manner of really enjoying the band without going overboard into blind devotion. My appreciation for Lagwagon mostly stems from the short but sweet album Let's Talk About Feelings, a release that turned me on to their simple yet passionate style of pop-punk music.
When I was in the early part of high school I had been enamored with various radio-friendly pop-punk bands, the usual fare for the time such as Green Day, The Ataris, MxPx and Blink-182. Nothing too deep in the scene, the very fluff of it really. I previously wrote about a friend slipping me a disc of Thrice's music and how it brought me into another vein of musical appreciation. This same friend had, just a couple years earlier, grown tired of my playing the same bands over and over and decided to do something about it. When exiting my car after school one day he turned and said "Oh yeah, this is for you" and tossed me a burned disc. No explanation, just tossed the disc on the seat and walked off. Sometimes that's the best way to be given a new piece of art or media - no long explanation to set up expectations or tell you how to interpret it. Just take it and listen. That introduction, a casual one-off gesture, may well have been the reason I received the band so well. To completely miss this point, I'll now ignore my own advice.
The album is the product of a bunch of So-Cal punks, playing tight and fast as a cohesive unit. Used to making albums on a shoestring budget in limited time, they formed a tight group that fit like clockwork. Unlike the spate of bands in the mid-90s that sold out or bought in (Green Day, Rancid, Offspring) Lagwagon made a conscious effort to stay on Fat Wreck Chords, headed by Fat Mike of NOFX. Having released several albums on the label, the band set to work in the studio for this album in 1998. Clocking in at just under 26 minutes, its an insanely short but solid album, with no filler whatsoever. The songs are short and to the point, but still manage to feel like full blown affairs. These aren't your double time, fast-n-furious punk numbers, but rather punchy little pop songs that have a gritty realness to them. Guitar parts are played with loose strumming and palm-mutes galore, their tone creating a crunch that permeates the album. The songs here, while intense and uptempo, are not simply played with wild abandon but with raucous energy that propels their earnest nature into something more tangible. It's toe-tapping stuff with insightful, amusing lyrics coupled with melodies and hooks that really grab your ear. Choruses become the wide-open, sing along type that made them mainstays on the Warped Tour while they steadfastly remained underground. If you're looking for what So-Cal pop-punk can be when it isn't homogenized or watered down, look no further.
This band, and in particular this album, are favorites of mine for their earnest and honest approach. There's simply no posturing here - the songs speak for themselves. Rather than ramble on for hundreds of words I'll just leave it at this. It's a fantastic album I can let play straight through without skipping any songs, which is quite a feat in our overstimulated modern world. Even some of the albums I've previously written about have the occasional clunker or sub par track. That is not the case here. Check out Lagwagon's Let's Talk About Feelings. I'll let the music do the talking for me.
Back into the work week we go.
Yesterday I wrote a short bit about how great Joey Cape's solo debut is while only barely mentioning his career with Lagwagon. What I may not have expressed fully in that brief aside is the simple fact that I love Lagwagon. Not to the extent of my obsessions with Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins, mind you, but in a simpler manner of really enjoying the band without going overboard into blind devotion. My appreciation for Lagwagon mostly stems from the short but sweet album Let's Talk About Feelings, a release that turned me on to their simple yet passionate style of pop-punk music.
When I was in the early part of high school I had been enamored with various radio-friendly pop-punk bands, the usual fare for the time such as Green Day, The Ataris, MxPx and Blink-182. Nothing too deep in the scene, the very fluff of it really. I previously wrote about a friend slipping me a disc of Thrice's music and how it brought me into another vein of musical appreciation. This same friend had, just a couple years earlier, grown tired of my playing the same bands over and over and decided to do something about it. When exiting my car after school one day he turned and said "Oh yeah, this is for you" and tossed me a burned disc. No explanation, just tossed the disc on the seat and walked off. Sometimes that's the best way to be given a new piece of art or media - no long explanation to set up expectations or tell you how to interpret it. Just take it and listen. That introduction, a casual one-off gesture, may well have been the reason I received the band so well. To completely miss this point, I'll now ignore my own advice.
