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Follow me here: Punk rock
is like Joan Rivers. In an ongoing quest for eternal
youth, it continually tears at the flesh of its own
face, pushing and prodding and tightening and twisting
until what emerges is a boring old monster that,
somehow, everyone is OK with looking at. And this far
down the line, punk rock has been reshaped so many times
it sometimes looks like a busload of 70-something
sun-bunnies in coastal Florida, face lifted into an army
of look-a-likes. Somewhere along the ride, its mean
spirit left the tuneful bands for hardcore and metal,
and punk rock filled with melody became nice. And funny.
And safe. And dull as shit.
Enter Alkaline Trio, circa 1997. Right out of the gate,
the kids realized that while this may still be loosely
categorized as "pop-punk," it’s a full step beyond.
There’s a dark side to this band, a world-weariness, and
some honest-to-whoever honesty all balled up into a
completely kinetic force. Even the jaded fucks can’t
help but sing along to those two
different-but-perfectly-complementary voices,
singer/guitarist Matt Skiba’s triumphant rasp and
singer/bassist Dan Andriano’s more measured, sweet croon
as they combine to completely wreck audiences with
bittersweet songs about love and loss, drugs and
drink,God and Satan, happiness and pain. All of this
comes from three young guys, about as many chords, and a
healthy supply of beer, cigarettes, and heartbreak.
"There’s definitely a reason we play the kind of music
that we do," says Skiba. "We offer kids a little darker
slice of punk rock. Hopefully it separates us from bands
that sing about going to the mall and chewing
bubblegum." Two albums, both recorded on a shoestring
for indie label Asian Man, delivered on the promise of
Alkaline Trio’s early live shows: As fucked-up as they
are wonderful, both 1998’s Goddamnit and 1999’s Maybe
I’ll Catch Fire breathed new life into a music world
rife with second-stringers and gonna-bes that thought
(and continue to think) that looks and guitar tones were
more important than feelings and smarts. The
audience-band connection was both immediate and binding.
More and more kids started showing up, and watching them
all simultaneously sing "I'd love to rub your back"
along with Matt was pure magic every time. Vagrant
Records showed up, too, in time to plunk the band into
Minnesota’s semi-legendary Pachyderm Studios and release
2001’s set, From Here To Infirmary, produced by longtime
Trio associate Matt Allison and expertly mixed by Jerry
Finn, a man who’s made similarly minded bands
(Jawbreaker, Green Day, and Blink 182, among others)
sound extra fine. Then came 18 months of non-stop
action: Warped Tour, Plea For Peace Tour, Vagrant
America Tour, Blink-182 Tour. Is your city on the map?
Alkaline Trio played there once or twice. A great
looking video (for "Stupid Kid") hit the airwaves.
Somewhere in there, drummer Mike Felumlee departed, and
in stepped Derek Grant, an old friend of Andriano’s. The
two met at legendary Chicago punk palace the Fireside
Bowl. Grant was a perfect fit, and the new Trio started
writing songs together almost immediately after he
arrived. Says Skiba: "I feel like there’s three members
of the band again for the first time in a while." Grant
concurs, "The minute I sat down behind the drums with
these guys, it felt right. There was no doubt that this
was where I wanted to be." he says. Which leads us to
where these record company bios always do: The New
Album. Everything the Alkaline Trio has done has been
gut-punchingly great and Good Mourning can sit proudly
next to those other albums without having to hover above
them. Let's talk about the songs, shall we? That’s why
we’re all here.
In keeping with its title, Good Mourning reveals and
reinforces a peculiar Skiba trait: He rarely sounds more
alive than when he’s singing about death, whether it’s
the death of a relationship, or in the case of Good
Mourning’s "This Could Be Love," his own demise. On it,
he cheerily describes how someone might kidnap and
murder him ("Step one, slit my throat / Step two, play
in my blood") and in the same thought gives shout-outs
to his various hometowns. "Continental" tackles the
subject from a more serious angle, distilling the
frustration of losing someone to addiction into a
charged rock song with a new wavey breakdown. On the
hyper-speed "Fatally Yours", he gets whacked by the end
of a relationship. The deliciously titled "Donner Party
(All Night)" posits "I guess it’s for the better if you
just can’t feel a fucking thing / fall asleep and die.
It was a dark year, explains Skiba. "With the band it
was great, but I definitely had some things to write
about. It feels good to get some of those things off
your chest rather than have them swimming around in your
head all the time. Aside from playing music with my
friends and traveling with my friends, getting those
kind of things out has become necessary for me."
Then there’s the deep and dark "All On Black," a
blasphemous stab at redemption and the song that Skiba
describes as "the most personal and specific on the
record." Oddly enough, it may contain the most
triumphant and cheeky pro-Satanic message in the history
of rock, culminating in the line, "What's upside down,
coated in silver? / This crucifix, my four-leaf clover."
Alkaline Trio has always employed sinister imagery to
push buttons, something the singer relishes: "If it
offends people who are afraid to question their own
faith, then it’s a good thing. We were on the list of
records that a church wanted a certain record store to
pull off the shelves. I was pretty happy about that. I
don’t actually believe that there is a Satan or a hell
or all that kind of stuff, but the imagery more than
anything is exciting and challenging. But if it’s gonna
piss somebody off for me to say I’m a Satanist, I’d be
happy about that." Dan is happy for more direct reasons,
and he’s not afraid to let it out. On "100 Stories" he
finds out that hell is actually pretty cold and that
hurting yourself isn’t all its cracked up to be. We find
out once again that he’s got the melancholy spark of a
young Elvis Costello, and the voice to provide a perfect
counterpoint. He’s always brought that balance, and he
provides Good Mourning’s bits of sunshine with a pair of
love songs: "Every Thug Needs A Lady" (yes, you can
assume he’s being silly with the title, but not the song
itself) and "Blue Carolina."
"The music I’ve been listening to probably has something
to do with it, and where I’m at now. I’m feeling better
about things but Matt’s still evil," laughs Andriano.
"I’m happy that Dan’s happy," says Skiba. "More than
ever, it’s definitely a pretty huge difference between
where we’re at in our lives. It makes it kind of
different, but hopefully it’ll be something that people
appreciate more than something that doesn’t make any
sense. I think Dan’s songs are great, some of the best
he’s ever written ˜they’re definitely the happiest he’s
ever written. We like to have a little hope at the end
of the tunnel. We don’t want somebody to listen to the
record and wanna go jump off a bridge or something." The
album ends with the touching, solo / acoustic "Blue In
The Face," which despite its complete lack of rock,
manages to encapsulate both Good Mourning and Alkaline
Trio perfectly. Though weary, drained, and dejected, it
manages to bear something funny, touching, and
believable in one simple line: "Your coffin or mine?"
After an album this strong, that question sounds not
only inviting but almost inevitable."We’ve already
gotten leaps and bounds beyond anything I would’ve
imagined with this band," says Skiba. "Hopefully this
doesn’t scare anybody away, and hopefully it invites
some new friends." |
