How political a piece of art is depends, to a great degree, as much on context as on content. As the nation girds for an election that both sides are weighing just slightly below Armageddon in terms of import, as it becomes ever-harder to ignore the ugly, low-intensity combat of culture war at home and far uglier, far more intense and literal combat of real war abroad, everything – at least for those inclined to look at things this way – becomes political. This heightened sensitivity to everything that is said and not said can be exciting, but it’s also kind of making me (and, I suspect, many others as well) fucking insane. Parsing everything – Fat Joe says pull up your pants and do the rock-away… I get it, but rock to the left? To the right? Where does Joey Crack stand on school vouchers? – collapses at some point into inability to parse anything. Look hard enough at something – even the most willfully stupid and disposible pop – and you can see whatever you want. Look too hard at everything, and you come pretty close to seeing nothing.
So it’s frankly refreshing to hear a record that is, no bullshit, unabashedly and straightforwardly about politics. The Thermals new Fuckin A is undeniably one of those records: a political piece of work in full, if also a pretty impressive piece of art. When The Thermals got their start in Hutch Harris’ Portland, OR kitchen in late 2002, the world was still plenty f’ed up. But in the year or so since The Thermals scored a weird but certifiable breakthrough with the punk-edged and ultra low-fi More Parts Per Million, current events (if viewed from a certain perspective that, to be clear, I share wholeheartedly) have kind of hit the crapper running. It’s hard to tell if things are actually worse now than they were last year around this time, or two years ago. But, in the strangled intensity of Harris’ vocals and in the focussed (and notably less primitive) sonic assault of Fuckin A’s 12 brief and nasty songs, the anxiety of the moment is not merely alluded to. The tension that defines our moment leaps from subtext to text, and the music that results is cathartic in all the right ways.
Except for the fact that it substitutes mordant political observation (and a few knife-edged relationship songs) for the weightlifter crunch and claustraphobic self-centeredness that defines so much contemporary hardcore, Fuckin A is basically a super-speedy punk record. Of course, those substitutions are good things: Harris isn’t screaming so much as he’s shouting (there’s a difference), and these short, speedy songs are as clear and no-nonsense as a gunshot. “How We Know” and “A Stare Like Yours” are so fervent and intensely written that they sound political, even though they’re just conflicted, emotionally raw relationship songs. The defiant album-opener “Our Trip” (“we’re self-mending/we’re self-cleansing/we won’t flinch/we don’t give a shit”) is boldly and unmistakably political, and serves as a mission statement of sorts for the record: an anti-anthem of thoughtful dissent, confusion and anger. Fuckin A eschews the clunky piety of the terrible protest songs that good bands have been recording of late – nothing here of the Beastie Boys’ middle-school punditry in “In A World Gone Mad” or the just-terrible campus vigilcore of Sleater-Kinney’s “Combat Rock” – in favor of a dangerously pure projection of the extreme anxiety that comes with reading the news every day. Even better than “Our Trip” is the supercharged rage-up “God and Country,” which manages to deal explicitly not just with Harris’ palpable anger at the country’s direction (and leadership) but with the feeling of powerlessness that comes with citizenship in a non-swing state. “Keep Time” is another angry anthem, if also one that – like “God and Country” and Fuckin A in general – is also leavened with a certain ragged optimism, and a real understanding of the essential importance of hope. These 12 songs romp through their short, sharp running times with a maximum of noise and sharp edges, and Harris doesn’t cut any corners with his lyrics: he’s trying to say important things, and says them. It helps that he’s smart as hell, and it’s especially impressive that he’s willing to go for a line like “it’s my flag” (it looks like a wince-inducer in print, but it’ll get your fist pumping in context) on “God and Country.” It’s a statement so simple, true and unadorned – so stripped of the famous-dude self-righteousness that sinks so many protest songs – that it’s a shock to hear it in an indie song.
Fuckin A is only 28 minutes long, pedal-to-the-metal the whole time. There’s not much in the way of tone shifts, and the songs are, at times, difficult to distinguish from one another. In its way, this is an exhausting record, but you’ll leave it with a good kind of weariness: there’s a real relief, and real pleasure, in actually hearing real life addressed about on record. It’s surprising just how bracing and exhilarating it is to actually hear work that acknowledges this difficult world. Fuckin A looks at the open sore of the last four years and finds some art in it. The resulting work is angry, but adult: The Thermals are not hiding behind pseudo-Malkmusian madlibs or fantasies of omnipotence. It’s a tougher artistic road, this making art both in and about this world, but being a grown-up is tough, too. The alternative is bullshit. |