Biting Elbows

Biting Elbows

These dudes swallowed punk rock and barfed up…punk rock.

This album is the album I’ll recommend to anyone who says that they’d like to listen to punk, but they seem disinclined to buy into the whole culture and historical baggage.

It’s like these Biting Elbow dudes listened to all the punk there is then did music. From The Stooges through The Clash and into all the modern stuff, like they listened to Celtic Punk, and reggae, and ska, and protest punk, and all the punk there is, Biting Elbows absorbed it all, then created an aggregate of punk.

There’s complaining about boredom in this album. There’s calypso beats. There’s a little bit of brass, there’s a song about politics, and girls, and there’s anger, and more boredom. There’s simplistic guitar and lyrics, and there’s a distinctly psychobilly riff in that one track, and there’s so many power chords.

It’s all the punk in one place…without any of the need to commit to one political camp.

It’s the absolute most “this is punk rock” album I have ever heard.

In so being, it’s also sort of the least. Because to be so middle-of-the-raging-highway-to-punksville, this album kind of leaves out that one thing that punk’s supposed to do: rebel. To be so very exactly like punk, they’ve sort of needed to conform to something.

The irony.

Still, this album is fun.

I nominate Biting Elbows to the ambassadorship of punk.

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