Happy Anarchy
Reset
Highlark Records
By Jose Fritz
In 1999, at least two years after the ska thing quieted down, Atlantic put out this last ska dreg, Torch This Place by The Atomic Fireballs. That album had one amazing single “The Man with the Hex,” but the rest of the album was flaccid. My fear on hearing “Bomp” was that this was a repeat of that, another late trailing ska band milking a dead cow. But neither of those was true.
The genre of ska is not a free-standing Malediction. Its touch does not leave a mark, and in this case it leaves only hints as to its presence: an A-chord strummed backwards, a horn blast, and funny smell in the air like brimstone and break-neck speed. The presentation is atypical to say the least.
This album has an amazing single. The song “Bomp” just about grabbed me by the face. The song had a strange reggae rhythm but a weird mathy back beat. By the time the horns kicked in I was lost and nursing a strange sensation in my temples. It was around 1996, at the height of the second great American ska deluge that I said I’d puke if I ever heard a lead trumpet again. But like a disenfranchised Midwestern voter, once placated, all is forgiven.
A single horn blast does not define ska. Cop Shoot Cop had a horn section, James Brown had a horn section, Beck samples horn sections, Herb Alpert was 99% brass and Morphine never left home without at least a sax trio. Happy Anarchy is the un-ska; as surely as 7-up is the Un-Cola™, Mellow Yellow is un-caffeinated, Shaun is the un-dead and George Bush is un-American.
Happy Anarchy has few of the traditional jumpy tempos, major chords and overall chipper fucking sentiment of mid ‘90s ska. They delve into this darker rock structure that with
Joe Pecors’s soprano voice alternates between Lou Reed-like spoken passages and the squealing highs of Jimmy Gnecco. The result is that the band actually resembles Ours more than the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but also the Brakes more than Velvet Underground. They share no common ground with the reggae-leaning bands of the genre.
Beside the perquisite saxophone and trumpet they also weave in congas, bass, keyboard and barefaced gusto. The album isn’t impulsive or rough. Each song is hand carved, sanded and finished with a rub of tongue oil. It’s been four years since their self-titled debut, and it sounds like they spent the whole of it on Reset. It stinks of high gloss sheen, and a full day of being polished with uchigumori stone, followed by a few hours of mineral oil and iron oxide. The production matches the song craft, and in the end, it’s about maneuverability, crisp technique, ability and deadly precision.
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