Anti-Flag blind with 'Bright Lights': Buzznet album review
Anti-Flag's latest album,
The Bright Lights of America, showcases a band ambitious enough to expand into unexpected musical genres. The dense musical structures routinely lose their urgency, however, by having too many cooks in the kitchen. Punk isn't dead yet, but it sure got a whole lot more confusing.
Political punk and Anti-Flag have gone hand in hand since the band formed over 20 years ago.
Bright Lights is no exception: topics such as animal abuse, political demonstration, and the status of the punk rock community all receive scathing indictments from the Pittsburgh-based four piece.
That's not to suggest these indictments are well-formed or articulated. Anti-Flag have always been more interested in creating anthemic rallying calls than the hyper-specific political punk of contemporaries like Propagandhi. From the opening chorus of "Good and Ready" to the forlorn melodies of "We Are the Lost," this band can pack in a thousand voices and catchy notes into a single bridge or chorus.
While it certainly takes talent to craft such a feat, the bandmembers spend most of Bright Lights sounding like everyone but themselves. "No Warning" closely resembles New Wave-era Against Me!, while the title track is reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen if The Boss was filtered through by-the-numbers street punk. The worst offenders are "Spit in the Face" and "Shadow of the Dead." The former is a near-literal copy of From Ashes Rise's "Reaction," from chord progressions to vocal patterns. "Shadow" sounds far too much like Brendan Kelly's side project, The Falcon. (In this case, "The Routes We Wander" is the victim.)
I don't know what Anti-Flag were trying to do with this record. I appreciate their willingness to avoid being typecast and experiment with new sounds. But in the process of trying to stop sounding like Anti-Flag, they've transcended to a bizarre universe where it's OK to combine shoddy production, hollow guitars, and a frequent rip-off of bands who do political punk so much better than they do.
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