Motherfish #4- Good Luck Hank

Motherfish #4- Album of the Week


Cell phones are so terrible. This little son of a bitch sits on my desk and wakes me up when any monkey randomly puts together the string of digits in my phone number. It's 4:06 AM and I'm finally dozing off before my 8 AM class when my phone goes off and I get to spend the next 20 minutes explaining to Hank that I don't know his daughter, nor do I know where she is. Nothing short of a rousing conversation which, luckily, did not wake my roommate up. If you remember last week, I mentioned how I already had a review written, and how I would use it this week. Well SHUT UP OR GTFO because I'm using it next week. Once I stopped listening to Tonight (the Franz Ferdinand album from last week, remember?) this album basically took over my speakers. All of them. Car, basement, computer, everything.

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Get Warmer by Bomb the Music Industry!

The above rant is entirely true, and entirely random. Though, in it’s own special way, it’s pertinent. My experience on the phone with Hank captures the unique mood of this week’s album, Get Warmer by Bomb the Music Industry. For those of you who are too stupid to realize (much like I was for 6 weeks or so), BTMI is the side project of Jeff Rosenstock of Arrogant Sons of Bitches. There is a lot of background information on the album to be found on the BTMI website, so I’m going to skip all of that shit. Look it up if you really care, because it’s actually a cool story. Anyway, back to Hank. Jeff’s goal with the album was to take simple things like barbeques or riding bikes and use them to look at much bigger problems with humanity in general. After last night/this morning’s incident, I could only imagine what he would say about a man calling a complete stranger looking for his partying daughter. Bad news, Hank, she’s probably very drunk and knocked up somewhere. If I see her, I’ll tell her you send your best. Lyrically the album does something unique; it talks about being drunk and poor without making Jeff look like a total asshat. You know those bands you see at frat parties and their frontman starts the show off by, poorly, screaming into his mic “This is a song about drinking beer and having sex with bitches” and you think to yourself “oh god, what a tool, what an insufferable tool”? That’s not BTMI. Thankfully. Jeff openly wonders why he even sings about beer in the song Unlimited Breadsticks, Soup, and Salad Days. For all fans of the Olive Garden out there, your time has come. Jeff’s approach to songs about beer is less ‘look at me drink and be cool!’ and more ‘fuck, I’m drunk again and it might fuck up my life, but I’m going to have a great time’. Beer music you can relate to on a much more fulfilling level.

Musically the album is all over the place. Acoustic guitars, electrics with and without distortion, synths, a variety of horns, and piano all call Get Warmer home. All you fans of Arrogant Sons of Bitches and ska in general will most likely get into BTMI if you haven’t already, unless you are into Goldfinger*, in which case Bomb the Music Industry is too good for you. Rosenstock’s ska roots really show on most of the tracks, but that doesn’t mean BTMI is only for fans of ska. BTMI draws from the obvious ska and punk scenes, but Rosenstock has mentioned that Neutral Milk Hotel is just as big of an influence. The band experiments a lot with the classic ska song framework, and songs like I Don’t Love You Anymore (which features a swing/boogie piano) and the title track Get Warmer (sounding like what I imagine a waltz would be if waltzes were cool and not sissy music) really show that off. There’s a lot going on during the course of the album, but that doesn’t take away from its listenability. I’m all for going crazy on albums, but when it becomes a clusterfuck of noise then you need to stop wanking on the soundboard and actually make music. Although Jeff probably does his share of wanking, the album doesn’t suffer from it. All things considered, his spooge is probably why BTMI works so well. This is one of those rare albums that sets a high energy bar right in the beginning and maintains it without becoming abrasive, and couples that with actual substance, both musically and lyrically. Plus, with a name like Bomb the Music Industry, you’ll sound SUPER COOL whenever you drop the name on your friends. Get it? I’m clever.






*Author’s Note: I have no problems with Goldfinger and I wanted to use another ska band for this example, but somebody I know who reads this is a huge fan, and will probably kill me in my sleep. So, just read Goldfinger as the shittiest ska band you know, and you’ll get the point.