“It’s all still there,” Jeff Rosenstock recently told a Vanyaland reporter, when asked whether people should still care about punk. “You just gotta look for it.” The Long Island native is, in certain circles at least, a big reason why that’s the case.
With The Arrogant Sons of Bitches or Bomb The Music Industry!, as a solo artist and more recently as half of Antarctigo Vespucci, he’s put together a sprawling, DIY back catalogue of remarkable consistency. ‘We Cool?’ is the next step, and a big one.
Released by SideOneDummy, this feels like something of a fresh start, despite containing the classic ingredients of a Rosenstock release. On one hand, it’s diverse, inventive and grounded by hooks, with power-pop rubbing shoulders with Ben Folds Five-style horn breaks and glitchy drum machines.
There is also a sense, though, that this is Rosenstock setting his stall out, and he hasn’t put out anything quite so cohesive since Bomb The Music Industry! signed off with ‘Vacation’.
Anchoring the whole thing is his confessional lyrical style, something that doesn’t alter whether deployed over the breakneck close of Get Old Forever or Nausea’s piano/falsetto combo.
He’s a punk growing older, with friends settling down, tourmates scattered across the US and an encroaching sense of loneliness. “When your friends are buying starter homes with their accomplishments,” he sings to, perhaps fittingly, open the album. “Drinking at a house show can feel childish and embarrassing.”
His candour is matched only by the quality of the songs. You In Weird Cities, Hey Allison!, The Lows, Beers Again Alone and the aforementioned odd bedfellows are rousing and beautifully constructed in equal measure, their many constituent parts seamlessly knitted together. Great punk is out there alright. Might as well start here.
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