Artist: The Estranged
Album: The Subliminal Man
Year: 2010
Genre: Punk / Post-Punk
For a
decent amount of time now I’ve been bitching up a storm that punk rock has let
me down the last 20 years. Most of my
rants have been to friends and some have been touched upon in other reviews on
this blog. I’m still having the inner
fight of “Is it me? Have I changed?” vs.
“has a large amount of punk rock just kind of sucked for quite a while now? Is it just repeating itself?” I’m very aware that is an enormous blanket
statement and undeniably there have been punk-based albums that have lit my
world on fire in the 2000s; just not an overabundance of them. There are even a smaller number of new bands
with records that become part of my regular listening. Uggg.
The “getting old” factor sucks no matter the reason.
What this brings us to is The Subliminal Man by The Estranged; an album that seems to slip away from me for long periods of time, which is an unfortunate mistake to make because this album is really, really good. Recently, I had some digital files on random and songs from this record kept popping up. So, I put the LP on, sat down and gave this record a focused listen, front-to-back, and got instantly pissed at myself that I don’t have these songs burned more into my memory. The Estranged play the perfectly balanced amalgam of punk and guitar-based post-punk. The songs are extremely straight-forward and don’t bullshit you with drawn out passages or energy drains. Instantly the reverberations of The Cure’s first release, Joy Division and The Wipers come to mind, but The Estranged don’t exactly sound like any of them and have clawed out their own little niche in the same dark corner in which those bands reside. On this second full-length, they have smoothed out the rough edges of their previous work. Some people might not like that they dialed down the aggression a couple notches, but I find their balance between youthful hostility and melody much more appealing and seems to play directly to their strengths as musicians. The production gives the album a timeless feeling as it sounds like it could’ve been recorded during the last 40 years, but doesn’t sound dated and fits the music perfectly. Thank god there are albums like this negate my terrible attitude and remind me to quit being “get those skateboards off my driveway” guy.
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