Street Dogs – New Disc, Old Memories
For anyone else who longs for the carefree days of high school, mosh pits and minute-long songs, take comfort: you are not alone. There are lots of us wistfully tuning into our old Dropkick Murphys and Rancid CDs, all while maintaining a demeanor of professionalism and successful semi-adulthood.
Today, we all have permission to throw away our business casual wear and forget about those years of lessons learned after our teen angst fell away. Street Dogs, punk rock veterans from Boston, released their latest, self-titled disc on Hellcat on August 31. A perfect burst of punk rock memories, tied together with topical and intelligent lyrics, the disc seems tailor made for the punk fan who has already finished college.
It’s a deeper, introspective, black & white kind of punk
Grabbing listeners’ attention immediately, Street Dogs continue on an 18 track race, linking song to song so perfectly it takes a quick check of the iPod to tell when one has ended and the next begun. Already sold on the album for nostalgic value, it was track 3, “Up The Union” that really hooked me. Taking the expected anti-Wal-Mart stance we’ve all come to expect from a punk rock album, Street Dogs demonstrate a firm grasp on the realities of our world that sadly most new punk outfits are happy to ignore. Using the lyrical tricks of Green Day and Bad Religion, Street Dogs are throwing a bone to the older listeners who tune into NPR and have opinions on the EFCA. We appreciate it.
A whole lot comes up when you google image “wal-mart evil.”
Without beating the listener down with a rhythmic reading of the New York Times, Street Dogs return to fun, energetic beats before hitting us again with track 10 “Hang ‘Em High,” an ode to Bernie Madoff and the colossal wreck of a Ponzi scheme he ran until 2008. Apparently unsatisfied with the 150 year sentence Madoff received, Street Dogs use this number as a platform to suggest that he be hung from the rafters instead. I’ll leave it to the audience to decide how they feel about that. In any event, points to the songwriters for working “Bernie Madoff” into so many rhymes.
I wonder if the PR person who put him in this hat actually thought it would make him look like a “regular guy.”
Beyond the memories of my fleeting youth, Street Dogs put together a great album with creative and thoughtful lyrics on a punk landscape. Even without the history of a wannabe punker, Street Dogs is musically solid and lyrically awesome, a fun listen for any rock fan.
*By Jesy, who might be the only person in Chicago excited for the end of summer.
