Attack the Palate – Burnt Out
Genre: Pop Punk, Pop Rock, Alternative Rock
Pop-punks are like cheerleaders who aren’t allowed to have a bad day. Everyone will be judging them. The people around them will start feeling that a great injustice has been done when they’ve not flashed a smile or treated to a dick joke. Pop-punks and cheerleaders are the sad clowns of our days.
When it comes to the musicians, you can blame a lot of this on the shiny music videos and all of the fun that your Blink 182s and Good Charlottes seem to be having. It’s no wonder that all of those bands ended up fully embracing the emo trend and, for all intents and purposes, fully embodying that genre from then onwards.
It’s hard to always play the clown, as Attack the Palate’s Burnt Out clearly shows. This is music built on a pop-punk foundation, but one that brings a level of aggression and darkness that would not have made this group ideal as an MGK opener. But, it’s sincere, well-played music that finds the goth at the heart of mall punks.
Sub Cultures – Smoke Room
Genre: Shoegaze, Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
In 2022, punk rock is, once again, in vogue due, for the most part, to the influence of meme-consuming internet users. It’s not uncommon to see these songs and videos shared on social media. Usually, they are accompanied by some kind of humorous comment about how difficult getting out of bed on Mondays really is.
The fact is that punk music that appears to be made by working-class people will always have an audience. It’s not only some sort of magic artistic integrity that makes it successful. It’s the fact that it has a built-in audience of disgruntled employees looking for sounds that reflect their frustrations and for ways to share those.
Sub Cultures’ Smoke Room is a song that seems to have been born out of the very promise of British working-class boredom and range. The vocals echo through like a footy fan complaining about the game having been canceled due to the rain. Meanwhile, the instrumental rises like beautiful smog over a clear blue sky. It’s enough to drive you crazy, and we’ll have to live with it. But it’s always good to get a little bit angry.
