Minas – Payday
There’s a new kind of punk music in town, and it sounds like it’s made by former factory workers on cheap computers. In many ways, it is the most honest representation of the Western world, a paradise for those who’ve not had the fortune of being born there, and hell for the inhabitants who’ve been asked to try and maintain the dream.
In many ways, being reminded of this dream on every occasion seems only to make it all worse. You couldn’t bother telling Johnny Rotten that he was lucky not to have been born in Eastern Europe or Africa, just like you can’t tell someone dealing with a toothache that there are many more worse ailments with which they could be dealing.
Minas’ Payday is cut from the same cloth as the music of working-class heroes Sleaford Mods. These are tunes made with the anger of someone that would rather see the world that they are on the periphery off shatter down around them. That’s all good enough. But, it communicates all of this, however, on the back of a memorable chorus hook that sounds like an assembly line doing the shimmy.
Shitty Neighbors – Whole Life Policy
You don’t really watch a gigantic Hollywood production and say to yourself, “Well, I could do this surely”. You don’t really watch Eddie Van Halen playing Eruption and go, “Yeah, well doesn’t take much talent to play that“. Of course, you wouldn’t unless your sense of self-worth is a Godzilla-sized monster.
However, throughout the generations, many have heard and looked at punk bands like the Ramones or The Descendents and thought to themselves, “This looks like fun. I relate to this. I think I can do this too.” Punk-rock is a shortcut to a life otherwise unattainable for many.
There’s something extremely democratic about who gets to play punk music. Similarly, there’s something refreshingly direct and honest about punk songs like Shitty Neighbors’ Whole Life Policy. Powerful, melodic, and sounding like a friend sharing their life story after a few cans of lager, it shows just why kids are still busy forming their own bands in their parents’ garage.
