Epitaph Records, July 17, 2020
The Lawrence Arms make a believer out of me.
Okay, so a confession. I’ve never been much of a fan of The Lawrence Arms. Cast me out and call me a heretic as you wish, but their music has rarely hit right for me. In fact, while I keep listening trying to figure out the fuss, I’ll go so far as to say that aside from Oh! Calcutta!, I haven’t listened to any of their records much past the original release dates. But this write-up isn’t a story of my mistakes, but instead a story of my redemption. And Skeleton Coast is the cause.
Skeleton Coast somehow finds all the right tones for right now. Deeply darkened and pessimistic, yet somehow life-affirming, the record is sort of gorgeous and sort of aggressive, sort of vigorous and sort of weary. The recording is clean and crystal clear without coming off as “too-polished”. And despite some greatly negative fatalistic words, somehow I walk away from this thing with some sort of uplift, maybe even a “we’re all in this together”-style camaraderie.
The songs on Skeleton Coast all seem to dig into an “end of days” sort of theme, alternating singers (bassist Brendan Kelly and guitarist Chris McCaughan) and sometimes finding a little hope to latch onto. Opener “Quiet Storm” stunned me quickly. Chris takes the clean and alarmingly bare lead, erasing the past and the future in the process. And after a measured intro, the song catapults forward with driving layered guitars and super melodic bass, ultimately getting all liberated with “there is no past, the future has been cast, now I’m free to live at last”. The Brendan-sung follow-up “Plains, Trains, and Automobiles” opens with a wonderful cacophony, aggressive and banging, melodic and catchy. On it, Chris throws in a keyboard earworm without softening up the song and Brendan sounds desperate as he sings hook after insightful hook (including one of my favorite lines on the record, “if you’re fighting yourself, then no one is fighting for you”). About halfway through, the song pauses, everyone catches their breath, and then they go again. It’s a great one-two punch to open things up.
And Skeleton Coast is able to keep things going thereafter. Chris’s “Last, Last Words” has some fantastic sounding guitars, with chiming layers easily discerned and blended and a soaring lead that sounds beamed in from the heavens. And through clean vocals, he calls out the “phony” people and “bullshit game” he sees all around. Brendan songs like “How To Rot” and “Pigeons and Spies” get the hooks just right. They come loaded with urgent and angry guitars, great guitar leads (especially the soaring one from “Rot”), restless melodic bass, and rattling hi-hats courtesy of drummer Neil Hennessy. And the “whoa-oh” hook on “Pigeons” drags you in close before shattering you with lines like “keenly aware you don’t like that I’m here, all we have in common is that we hate me”.
And then Skeleton Coast closes with the thematic and cathartic “Coyote Crown”. The guitars are layered and completely destroy expectations and the chorus has one of my favorite melodies anywhere on the record. When Chris sings “I was the hero of another time”, the note he hits on “time” absolutely slays me. No idea why, but it just does. And then near the end, dueling lead guitars battle with differing tones, one more distant than the other, before they descend into chaos like a gorgeous painting being eaten alive by flames. It’s a really spot-on end.
Skeleton Coast has won me over. I don’t know if it makes up for my past transgressions, but I’m a changed person. I get The Lawrence Arms now and finally. This record lands and refuses to let my apparently contrarian self dismiss it. Now to dig into their other records to figure out what and why I’ve missed out on so much else.
You might like this if:
- You like The Lawrence Arms or gruff melodic power pop punk stuff
You might not if:
- You don’t like melodic songs and thoughtful near-poetic words
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
