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Against Me makes its official debut
on Fat Wreck Chords with the 11-track The
Eternal Cowboy, almost an EP by punk
standards. Driven by classic punk aesthetic, Against
Me maintains a decidedly lo-fi focus on punk’s
street folk leanings, giving it an organic edge
that at times goes beyond what acts like Rancid
and Flogging Molly have done to revive the purity
of the genre.
It’s the type of movement the underground
industry is becoming accustomed to, as punk artists
increasingly bypass standard iconic influences
like the Sex Pistols and The Ramones to instead
sing in the praises of what some consider to be
the original punks – we’re talking
Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Waylon and Willie.
And while one can suss out this sincerity in Against
Me’s music, the guys from Gainesville,
Fla., point to Billy Bragg as a predominant influence.
Given such tendencies, the amorphous alt-country
tag is typically soon to follow. Yet the tunes
on The Eternal Cowboy
merely flirt with the fringes of the genre, rather
than playing somewhere squarely between the sounds
of, say, Drag the River and Wilco.
As for hang-ups, the album is almost too brief
in that each song tends to end before it begins.
In this sense, The Eternal Cowboy
is akin to The Beach Boys’ “Smile,”
a record that merely featured a collection of
good songs in the process of becoming great. Fortunately
for Against Me, its tunes aren’t
in need of lush landscapes or great walls of sound,
but rather a step or two to transform its compelling
parts into complete songs.
www.fatwreck.com
Dave Haucke, December 11, 2003
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