Down By Law
All Scratched Up! (Epitaph)
by Scott Hefflon
Down By Law never ceases to amaze me. How they can write such poignant pop songs, such scathing punk ditties, and continually redefine the words shithead journalists like myself depend upon to convert sound to text – I dunno, this band floors me. All Scratched Up! is light years beyond punkrockacademyfightsong, which was, shall we say, 500 miles away from pulp punkpop. Dave Smalley has been setting the standard for sensitive rock/punk/pop/hardcore for a dozen years, and this new record just pushes the genre even further. Somehow, big Dave manages to reach into the guts of every subject he approaches and turn it into a lyric you can sing to, a melody you can hum to, a beat you can dance to.
All Scratched Up! is a huge record. With 17 tracks on the CD and 6 bonus tracks on the black vinyl double album, this must be thoroughly digested. The recurring anti-retro rants are tucked at the end of clever pop masterpieces, thus the balance of punk to pop stabilizes and we can all get on to more enlightening modes of thought, like enjoying the album. Down By Law seems to have a kind of magic perception – they see the same daily tedium as us average schmuckos, yet they capture it in words we all relate to. Not so general and vague that the original passion is lost, yet not so specific that the listener feels excluded. Fuckin’ genius. And humorous, too. They goof, they laugh, we laugh with them, world peace seems possible, and then the record ends.
Despite the stadium punk popularity of Down By Law, the band still feels accessible and warm. Unlike the typical you-shout-out-a-song-and-we’ll-play-it type of response, there seems to be some kind of emotional feedback going both ways. It’s hard to put into words without getting foolishly metaphysical, it’s best left as a feeling you understand when you experience it.
Down By Law has again gone beyond expectation and refined/redefined their style. Label-happy listeners will have to decide for themselves what to call this. Emo-core/punk-pop/melodic punk just don’t cut it.
