Released: August 9th, 2005Is it possible to make music that sounds like friendship? Probably not, but Latterman come close on No Matter Where We Go...!, a stirring and often times uplifting pop-punk album. Their message is consistently about honesty. Honesty in music and honesty in oneself, and this message is made only more endearing by their recorded-in-my-bedroom-on-my-macbook production quality and dual, shouting-till-something-in-life-changes vocals. The whole album is consistent but hits its peak on the closer "My Bedroom Is Like For Artists", where the boys bring up a fact that heavy-hitter punk-complainers like Anti-Flag and Pennywise continually miss: Suburban white punks have really nothing to complain about at all.
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I disagree about what "My Bedroom..." is about. It's saying they sing about fixing their own shit, both individually and in the community around them. It's the idea that you can't solve poverty in Africa when you have rising numbers of homeless downtown. It's also just a different kind of focus. A scumbag who beats his girlfriend isn't going to give a shit about the problems of the rest of the world. Start at home. Then look outward.
ReplyDeleteWhat I was getting at was that bigger bands don't ever address that. How many times have you seen Anti-Flag and heard their singer shriek "George Bush" this or "Government" that. "Punks start dealing with their own white privilege/we tell all the boys stop being so aggressive" That's about punk taking it's energy off of "society" which stereotypically means rebelling against parents and getting jobs and blindly hating the government because they're the government and putting it on the real problems in your life, and then as you said, on to the bigger world problems.
ReplyDeleteI think we're both barking at the same tree, so to speak... But it's exciting nonetheless, the discussion your review incited! I'm happy we're doing this blog!
ReplyDelete...Did that sound too dweebish?
I interpreted the line simply to mean that punks need to deal with their white privilege and sexism, two issues sometimes hypocritically overlooked by a scene which considers itself progressive.
ReplyDelete