Day 21: The Lawrence Arms - Metropole

Artist:   The Lawrence Arms
Album:  Metropole
Source:  http://www.avclub.com/article/stream-metropole-the-new-record-from-the-lawrence-107088

Pre-listening Notes:  Here is another band, similar to Against Me!, where I am not super familiar with the catalog, even though it's fairly extensive.  I am, however, a little more familiar with Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan's previous band The Broadways, and Kelly's ska-punk band Slapstick.  I enjoyed both bands to different degrees wtih me being more into the straight forward punk sound of The Broadways.  Then The Broadways played Buffalo once and they were kind of dicks, so I never really got into The Lawrence Arms when they first started.  Over time, I have heard a couple songs and countless people talk about how much they love this band.  This is their sixth album and their first for Epitaph Records, so they probably had a much better budget for recording than in the past.  It's also their first album in almost eight years, so they have probably had time to really write songs they find interesting and fine tune them for this recording.  And here we go.

Initial Reaction:  It's melodic punk, with contrasting vocals, one fairly clean the other a little gruffer.  The first song is a pretty short song, sort of introish.  The recording sounds pretty awesome.

Random Thoughts:    The clean vocals sound really polished.  I can see why a lot of people like this.  It's not the normal type of thing I listen to, but I am finding it pretty entertaining.  The video for the second song was a lyric video, if that type of thing is your thing.  The third song is a lot more up my alley, it's a faster song with some pretty great harmonies.  This almost has a later era Dillinger Four sound to it.  I like how the stream mixes in the video versions of the songs that already exist, rather than just putting the audio to a still image.  The fourth song, Seventeener (17th and 37th) is one I had previously listened to, which is what had me sort of excited to listen to this, which is a song about nostalgia or about scene jumpers (at least from what I gather), and is an excellent mid paced melodic punk song that if had come out in the mid to late 90's would have probably blown this band up bigger than a lot of the other stuff that came out during that period.  Acheron River is another faster song that reminds me of D4 and I am really digging.  The title track is pretty mellow.  Drunk Texts is a faster song with the childish vulgarity that a good pop punk record needs.  The choruses on Never Fade Away are excellent, it reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.  Another faster song, Paradise Shitty, which is a great song name, but another stand out track.  My only real complaint was the last song didn't have a "last song" feel to it.  It was a pretty short song without that real "press play again" feeling to it.

Final Reaction:   Okay, this is may be a case of right place, right time for me to really start discovering this band.  But, this record kicks ass!  It's a great blend of a lot of things I like about punk, and it varies enough to keep me interested the whole way through.  It's not raw, which in the past would have bugged me, but as an older guy, I think the polished sound of things helped me to really get into these songs.  I will definitely be listening to this again and looking into their back catalog.

Final Grade:  9.0/10