![]() ![]() It would be wrong, however, to paint the story of punk right now as existing solely of hipster crossover bands and more earnest types who deal in operatic emotion. The band pride themselves on constructing songs with the same care and attention normally afforded to short stories. As for La Dispute, they're releasing Conversations, an audio interview with lead vocalist Jordan Dreyer in which he discusses "the stories and themes" presented in their 2011 album Wildlife. Defeater, for example, have so far released two albums and an EP that all deal with the same story - of a post-second world war family and the fratricidal relationship between two brothers. Kerrang! writer Mischa Pearlman, who has covered The Wave in some depth, reckons that the bands should be applauded for an ambitious lyrical approach. Groups such as Baltimore's Pianos Become The Teeth, Michigan five-piece La Dispute and Massachusetts' Defeater have also been making headway together, and they've even jokingly named their own scene "The Wave" (something that all the bands involved seem to regret now that it's been adopted by the music press). Touché Amoré aren't alone in riding a screamo resurgence. The way lonely pianos rub up against desperate, throat-shredding screams on Condolences even reminds me of my own favourite angst album – Bright Eyes' Fevers And Mirrors. Of course, lyrics like "If you fantasise about your funeral/ I understand, I've been there before" (from Condolences) work better when screamed over crashing piano chords than they do on paper, but you can't deny they're rather angsty. Last year's Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me contains 13 songs that, played together, barely reach the 20-minute mark but with its emotional intensity and forceful playing, such brevity works just fine. I haven't seen them live but it's not hard to see how they might inspire devotion. Leading the charge are Californian band Touché Amoré, who Kerrang! magazine recently declared the most exciting new band around. The second strain of punk to be growing in popularity (although perhaps not with Sean) is screamo. Also worth a mention are the Men, who've trodden a similar path to Ceremony in the sense that their new album has broadened its sound (to take in both a drone and a country element). Other punk bands you could throw into this crossover category would include well-dressed Danish band Iceage (who will be taking a similarly Joy Division-esque sound across the UK festivals this summer), Olympia lo-fi quartet Milk Music and Gallows, who've split in two directions since Frank Carter left – the original band, and Carter's exploration of a more straight-up rock'n'roll with Pure Love. The results are colourful: Citizen unleashes runaway surf guitar riffs while Quarantine sounds like Detroit's soulful garage rockers the Von Bondies, but it's on Repeating The Circle that their main inspiration shines through – doomy, early 80s bands (perhaps not massively surprising, given that Ceremony are named after a Joy Division song). Instead, it seems to have smoothed the edges of their earlier releases and transformed the Californian band into garage rockers with a post-punk twist. That's the case to a degree with Zoo, which I happen to think is a pretty great record, albeit not a particularly punky one. ![]() ![]() But often there's more to it than that the bands that cross over generally contain interesting characters (such as Fucked Up's Pink Eyes or Gallows' Frank Carter) and display a desire to experiment beyond their genre's often rigid structures. Critics would say they're just token hardcore bands – symptomatic of the way punk culture has been jumped on by a hipster crowd who want a Black Flag tattoo and one band a year to listen to. ![]() They've also all crossed over from the punk scene into more mainstream areas during the past few years. What these three bands have in common is not just that they arrived after Sean's 1990 cut-off date. ![]()
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