mean music blog hours, vol. 2

pop-punk, now more than never

I’ve been thinking a lot about pop-punk. Shocker, I know. Pop-punk so rarely gets broken down typologically into waves the way emo does, but I wish it did so I could draw a line around the bands who broke through in the 2000’s and do away with them.

Anyways. Anxious.

My first exposure to Anxious was while eating a sandwich in the pit of Rockefeller Center with Olive. It was the first ever Indieplaza and we had shown up bright and early so I could see Dazy. Dazy, what a fucking band. We bounced out after Dazy to get sunscreen and returned in the middle of an indie band that had buzz and broke up recently. I always forget their name because they left no impression on me.

As we were eating our sandwiches I heard Anxious’ frontman say something about this being a hardcore band and I groaned. I’m so tired of hardcore adjacent pop-punk bands like this and KOYO. None of them have the charm to sell pop-punk or the nerve of hardcore to make either lane work for them (stone meet glass house, I own a Militarie Gun shirt and several of their records).

So after I ate my sandwich and tried on a beret at Uniqlo, I forgot about Anxious. That is, until Bambi press started, and interviews got me interested and single press releases hit the right talking points. I listened to “Never Said” and wasn’t repulsed. I was tempted to believe they may have the juice.

Nope. This shit sounds like Brand New at their most pop-punk, and that’s not even the era of Brand New I liked in college. This sounds like Good Charlotte. Let me steal some phrasing from Ian Mackaye on my favorite bootleg of “Suggestion” (from the Providence, RI, September 19,1993 show on the archive), after someone said he was drunk: “This is like Taking Back Sunday. This is like Brand New. What I’m trying to say is this sucks.” That shit has always sucked. Sonically, this is a wish-your-ex-died-in-a-plane-crash-because-they-dared-to-move-on type beat. But Anxious doesn’t even have the audacity to make something appalling melodramatic, they’re just boring.

I know romantic strife is fertile ground for pop punk but at least have the artistry to hit on it like Combat does all over Stay Golden. It’s there from track one as Holden Wolf sings “monogamy’s a hoax / and promises get broke” before launching into a diatribe against himself that he doesn’t dare counter. That’s what I love about Stay Golden, the awareness of arrested development and not knowing how to break out of it. Stay Golden is a record long attempt to reckon with feeling out of step with your peers, “when your friends are buying starter homes with their accomplishments drinking at a house show can feel tired and embarrassing” type beat. “Merrow Lanes” uses Magic the Gathering as an avenue to write about repeatedly throwing yourself against the wall with the same tactics expecting a change, and its taunt of “you’re gonna have to do better” is how I sound to myself every time my paycheck comes up short. “Compound Sentences” makes me miss Nathan and our trips to Kansas City to shop for records and eat burritos bigger than our heads. “Epic Season Finale” makes me feel okay that half my high school friend group is married with homes and some are expecting kids while it’s one A.M. on a weeknight and I’m riding the train to my reluctant home on the UES from Bushwick after screaming along to my friends’ songs about the endless liminal screen, failing to breathe, and flammable romantic situations.

Songs about untenable romantic longing are my favorite kind, which is why I love good pop-punk so much. The good songwriters are able to mine the friction between two people and distill it into pure feeling. That’s what I love so much about Polkadot’s album from last year, …to be crushed. The way Daney Espiritu coos “about you” on my favorite song from the album, “P.S.,” is filled with so much longing it calls to mind every time I’ve been up too late because I’m hung up on something a crush has said. I love the fuzzy guitars on “Unstuck” and the opening line about seeing your age in photos. The gang vocals on “Still Around” shouting the question “don’t it feel like it’s all the same” capturing the desperation of longing. “Crushed” starts with a guitar line that reminds me of New Order’s “Ceremomy” and evokes similar desperation for the rapturous joy of love, especially when Espiritu sings “I’m smiling ear to ear from nothing.” That actually maybe my favorite thing about love, be it the first pangs of a crush or six years into a relationship, those moments that mean nothing outside of the context between two lovers.

Similarly to my love for Polkadot, is my love for Star 99, whose sophomore album I wrote about over at Swim into the Sound (look at that, I’m getting better at self promo, maybe someday soon I’ll be able to talk about this blog without pretending it doesn’t exist).

I just finished reading I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall, and it’s my favorite book I’ve read this year because it is full of references to music I love and stories about fucked up codependent relationships are always my jam (as I have more than a few of those). But there’s a line Khaki, the narrator, thinks after getting chided for referencing Brand New in the year of our lord 2022 that has stuck with me: “No, I think that thought was my own, but some things are so deep in there that I can’t know what’s original and what I stole.” When a melody, or lyric, or guitar solo hits it becomes part of your lexicon for navigating the world. If a piece of music is going to take that space we are owed something good.

Anxious, you’re just gonna have to do better.