Whether in hopes of having art predict life or just tapping a catchy title, Gold Record keeps the true spirit of American punk alive, something Bouncing Souls consistently done for almost twenty years, along with Bad Religion and this year’s Warped headliner, Joan Jett.
From the basis of punk in its infancy, political topics arise but from a rarely used source: the soldier. “Letter from Iraq” was created musically by the band, the word-for-word accounts are from someone who was there, an Iraq veteran, Sniper 1st Infantry Division, Garett Reppenhagen. This joins the many homemade movies that other soldiers are posting to sites such as YouTube.com, enabling our men and woman to voice their experiences and be heard over the edited and vacant media coverage.
Other heartfelt songs run through the album, from the brotherly love track of “Jersey” to the near ‘dear diary’ song of “Messenger” where they give life inspiring advice in the most simplest of forms, “This is a message to you…do what you love love what you do.” The almost acoustic feeling “The Pizza Song” gets the to and fro sway going with warm horns and accordion licks, and the highly optimistic rhythms on the Kinks remake, “Better Things.”
Seek them out at Warped. You’ll want to catch every one of these songs in action.
www.bouncingsouls.com (from their site you can check out the video for “The Pizza Song”)
