Alkaline Trio -- Hipster Music

Agony & Irony

Alkaline Trio

Culled from The Alkaline Trio's many EPs and seven-inches, this album feels much more like an LP than most of these compilation albums usually do. It could be the comprehensive theme of drinking and misogyny, but more than likely it's the consistent, driving pop-punk, chugging guitars and vocal stylings. No whining here. No high, child-voiced lead singer with a snotty delivery. These guys sound like men, and they suffer like men, and solve it with drink as we all should. It's punk rock for adults--well really fucked up adults--that brings the headbanger out in all of us and makes us glad that our lives couldn't possibly be as miserable and messed up as these guys'. Definitely one of my great, guilty pleasure albums.

From Here to Infirmary

Goddamnit!

This is one of those serious guilty pleasure albums. I know I'm not supposed to like it at my age, but the weird punk-pop about drinking and f'd relationships seems somehow grown up amongst the glorified punk boy bands out there. I could listen to the song "San Francisco" fifty times in a row and never get sick of it. Their first album, I actually thought when I first heard of them that they were named after the Hall of Fame baseball player and were called The Al Kaline Trio.

Good Mourning

I never really knew what these guys looked like until I saw them on Conan. Holy Satanic priest! I mean, I knew they had this whole death gimmick, but they came complete with white makeup and shit. There are a lot of mentions of blood and dying on the album and the colors black and red, but it's still your essential whoa-is-me, pop-punk, emo stuff complete with self-loathing, lovelorn whining and lots of drinking (although not as much as on previous records). While still entertaining, it doesn't have those couple stand out tracks that some of their past albums have had, but they are still the tops in my mind in a somewhat tired genre. They're like a much darker, more mature version of Blink 182. There's no talk of school or anything, so it doesn't make me feel like I'm listening to kiddy music. If they were actually around when I was in college, I would imagine this would have been terrific just-got-dumped, drinking music. The fact that they have a song called "Donner Party" should give you an idea of where they're coming from.

Maybe I'll Catch Fire

Not as good as their debut, Goddamnit!, this album still has a couple classic punk-pop gems. "Fuck You Aurora" is great fun (cuz it has the word "fuck" in the title) and "Radio" features the great blow-off line "I wish you would take my radio to bathe with you./ Plugged in and ready to fall." These guys just know how to write a great, bitter break-up album while still making their music upbeat.