File Under: Post-modernist punk rock
If You Like: Fugazi, Sparta
Label: Saddle Creek
When rock bands, particularly punk rockers, take on small towns and religion, the results are predictable and frankly, boring as hell. I can’t say I was thrilled that one of the most interesting punk bands was going to tackle these two topics. I expected banality, even from a usually creative band. (Wow, you don’t like small towns and religion… what an interesting and surprising take on things). But the band ditched their cello and string section and replaced it with a horn section (don’t think for a second this is a ska album, its not), giving it a sound that can’t really be described.
The band doesn’t pretend they have answers, and they also show genuine sympathy for their small town characters, particularly their continual exploration of what happens to Dorothy when she goes back to Kansas. There might be no place like home, but Oz was exciting and now Dorothy is staring the same thing every day for the rest of her life, and she’s chasing tornados to get back to Oz. She eventually has to give up, wake up, and go to work like the rest of us. It’s a little sad, but it’s also comforting. The fictional titular town still loves her.
Which isn’t to say the album pulls punches. There’s a song about a gay priest who can’t be with the love his life, and then there’s the confrontational “Big Bang”: “There was this big bang once, but it doesn’t jive with Adam and Eve.” It’s clear their sympathies lie with science, but they never mock the religious. And the band ends up just confused on how to make the two jive, which is an interesting display of honesty: they admit they don’t know. Which makes this the album for agnostics. David Hume would love it.
THE VIDEO: “Dorothy At 40”. What happens when Dorothy leaves Oz? This song is actually pretty representative of the album. Sometimes the single is not a dirty trick.
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