Review: The Last Gang – “Noise Noise Noise”

Fat Wreck Chords – 08 Oct 2021

For their second album on Fat Wreck, The Last Gang delivers some of the best political songs of the year.

Noise Noise Noise is technically The Last Gang’s third album, if you count their 2013 album, Employee’s Picks Vol. 1, which the band self-released on CD-R and which is difficult to find now. While the band has been around since the 2000’s, early versions had an ever-shifting lineup with front-woman Brenna Red as the only consistent member. By the time they were signed to Fat Wreck Chords, the lineup solidified into a consistent trio. Noise Noise Noise, the band’s second album on Fat, sees the addition of a lead guitarist to make the band a quartet.

First we get the opening track, also the title track, a dub style song that’s a beautiful slow simmer of a song propelled by Brenna Red’s deep and sultry vocals.  The second track is, “WFTW,” which stands for “We Fuck the World.” It begins a recurring theme through the album of humanity, and especially America, being a plague that’s destroying the planet and constantly harming other people.  The press release we received for this album compared “WFTW” to Searching for a Former Clarity-era Against Me! That might be the case based on substance, but not presentation. I mean, they’re both good music, but “WFTW” is much more ska than Against Me! has ever been. 

“Shameless” seems to be a critique aimed directly at Trump, especially the refrain of “I can’t wait to see you fail.”  It goes after Trump for forcing his own delusions and denials onto the public rather than accepting reality.  The production shines through on this as much slicker than the previous album, whereas, if this song had been on Keep Them Counting it would have been much more heavily distorted.  “Gimme Action” is probably my favorite song on the album.  It addresses the growing fascist movement that blossomed under the Trump administration, switching freely between punk and ska and with an almost hip-hop section in the bridge towards the end, which is just an absolute delight.  “New Skin” is a foreboding ska-punk tune about the ongoing issue of sexual assault that, as the lyrics point out, about 1 in 3 women have experienced.  “Intelligence is a Plague” follows the themes laid down in “WFTW,” particularly laying blame at Trump supporters, name checking Breitbart in the chorus.  Red manages to furiously deliver some big and complex words in her lyrics with an ease that I’ve only seen before from Greg Graffin of Bad Religion. 

Still, a few tracks fall flat.  Both “Prosthetic Lost Cause” and “Paris Green” fail to really stand out on this album the way a lot of these other tracks do.  But the biggest disappointment on the album sadly comes in the last track, “To the King,” a lackluster love song that doesn’t really fit in with the political-heavy album, and which ends on a too-abrupt fade out. 

But those flaws aside, I’d still call this the best album to address the modern political climate that I’ve heard all year.  The slicker production and the added guitarist don’t really take away the charm of the previous album, but rather give this album new charms of its own.  The dramatic shift to a more ska and reggae-influenced sound shows the signs of a band that’s not static, but willing to shift and adapt when they need to.  In the Year of Ska, as I’ve been calling it, this is one of the standout albums, with some of the best lyrics and strongest political tirades. 

Red says that she spent time with Fat Mike of NOFX to write this album, and he encouraged her to embrace her ska-punk and reggae influences, particularly The Clash. The Last Gang’s previous album, Keep Them Counting, may have just briefly flirted with ska from time to time, but Noise Noise Noise wears the band’s Clash influence on its sleeve. While many albums have addressed the primary issues of 2020-2021 such as the pandemic and the lingering effects of the Trump administration, none seem to have done it as succinctly and unflinchingly as this album, giving the ghost of the great Joe Strummer a say in modern politics.