Very few bands can garner as much “cred” as the Lawrence Arms have. Hailing from the brutal streets of Chicago and being a crown jewel in local Punk hierarchy has ensured them a fiercely loyal following in the Midwest and throughout the country. This, in addition to their relatively low profile, has carved the band a perfect niche in the punk rock world: They’re everybody’s favorite band that no one has ever heard of.
The Lawrence Arms have been kicking out the jams for nearly 10 years now, and they’re six albums deep into what is shaping up to be a beautiful career. Their latest offering, Oh! Calcutta!, has proved that the Larry Arms, as their fans affectionately call them, are far from slowing down. After their phenomenal 2003 release, The Greatest Story Ever Told, the TLA were hardpressed to follow up with an improvement. Greatest Story featured TLA at their best-a cohesive pseudo-concept album showcasing their self-described “mid-western beer belly despair rock” sound. The two singers (Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan) split singing duties down the middle, alternating throughout the album without breaking its flow. Compared to that, Oh! Calcutta!, is quite a departure.
The opening track, “The Devil’s Takin’ Names,” sounds nothing like any previous TLA efforts. If anything, it sounds more like a song from Kelly’s side project, The Falcon. But it still has the edge that fans have come to expect. Lyrically, TLA remain as poetic as ever; playfully employing lyrics both intelligent and moronic, with tongues firmly in cheeks. This is one of the aspects of TLA that keeps the kids coming back for more. Their songs cover mostly issues of depression and defeat, without being whiney or taking themselves too seriously, like Hawthorne Heights and My Chemical Romance. They aren’t faking any emotion; these boys mean every line.
While Oh! Calcutta! has some rockin’ songs, it suffers from sounding too repetitive. The dual vocal-and song-writing style of their previous albums resulted in varied albums; McCaughan wrote the soft downers, and Kelly wrote the gritty, loud downers. Now, the two have melded their song-writing styles together, which is great, but it subtracts from the variety on the album. The songs, while mostly similar, sound like a halfway point between Dillinger Four and Alkaline Trio, which isn’t a bad thing, by any means.
The high point of the album, “Recovering the Opposable Thumb,” showcases the band’s shift to a more Dillinger Four-esque style of chaotic punk. In an angry fury, TLA turn a clever attack on Intelligent Design into a far-reaching critique on the modern political and intellectual backslide that’s currently plaguing America; they even squeeze in a potshot at Toby Keith himself! The punchline, if you will, of the song is, “How much of evolution must we finally disprove? Count on your fingers tonight, and believe what you find.” The song breaks down in the end, to a barrage of shouts of “Can we recover?” that beautifully overlap and collide to make a thunderous cacophony.
The remainder of the album covers all the TLA bases well enough, with some fantastic highlights. The extremely poppy “Are you there Margaret? It’s me, God” could easily be a hit single, without pissing off the fans. “Jumping the Shark” turns a showbiz term about a downward spiral (we have Happy Days to thank for this one) into a surprisingly uplifting song about turning away from a regretful past in a shower of bottles, dancing, whiskey and love. The album wraps up with the sentimental “Like a Record Player” and a lovely country ditty hidden-track that ends with an explosive punk blast.
Oh! Calcutta! isn’t the most easily accessible album out there, or even in the Lawrence Arm’s catalogue. It takes patience for the genius to settle in your ear drums. So, if you’re sick of Yellowcard and other like-minded crap hogging the “Punk Rock” flag, go out and give Oh! Calcutta! a few spins and see for yourself what good Punk Rock really is.
