The Californians’ fourth album is packed full of great tunes and lessons learned from life!
Here at Punktuation, we’re always keen to support younger bands, but we’ve also got love for the veterans – not least as a lifetime of playing in bands often yields plenty of great stories to tell. Granted, in terms of their longevity, Moonraker are hardly the UK Subs (‘Me And The Bells’ is only the Californian trio’s fourth album), but everything on this record sounds lived – the product of years of scraping by, of somehow surviving in the face of anxiety, isolation and general uncertainty.
Who’d be in a band these days? These guys’ trials and tribulations haven’t half made for great songs, though. Apparently, they describe themselves as “the Michael Jordan of baseball of punk rock” – we’re not quite sure what that means, but it might be an example of the band’s sharp-witted, sarcastic and often self-deprecating sense of humour. Musically, there’s plenty of overlap with the likes of The Menzingers and The Lawrence Arms, with twists of that traditional SoCal skate-punk sound here and there. The end result is gritty and raw (especially with the whiskey-soaked backing vocals!), but also replete with the kind of melodies lesser bands would kill for.
They’ve certainly got a nice turn of phrase, too. We (and you) would be here all day if we tried to pick our favourite rhyming couplet from ‘Me And The Bells’, but “Deep down I think we both know/I wanna torch it all like a modern McEnroe” (from ‘Perfect Sparrows’) and “So if you need someone to fix you/Try calling a pharmacist/But if you need someone to miss you/You’ll need to call a different narcissist” (from the closing ‘Violent Delights’) rank amongst the best. There’s a certain vulnerability on show, for sure, but it’s mixed with a knack for the tragicomic that recalls the Alkaline Trio school of lyrics, and we can’t get enough of the end result.
On the whole, it’s a briskly-paced record, with twelve songs clocking in just over half an hour, but the band are no less effective when they ease up on the gas pedal. The reflective ‘The Old Art School Try’ is proof enough of that; mostly just acoustic guitar until a cello and piano bubble up in the mix, it’s possibly the record’s most affecting moment. The only other real surprise is the appearance of some horns on recent single (and absolute banger) ‘Sometimes I Drink From The Volcano’, but when you’ve got songwriting skills like these, then honest old guitar, bass and drums do the job just fine.
Do you like any of the aforementioned bands? Then truly, you owe it to yourself to check out ‘Me And The Bells’ – one of the strongest records we’ve heard this year, no less.
‘Me And The Bells’ is out now via Punkerton Records – order it HERE.
- Wires
- The Audacity
- Don’t Forget You’re Here Forever
- Find Your Fangs
- Portrait Of The Artist As A (Sort Of) Young Man
- The Old Art School Try
- With Bells On
- Perfect Sparrows
- Beautiful Minds
- Sometimes I Drink From The Volcano
- Umbrage
- Violent Delights
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