Friday, September 19, 2008

At least they're not the Rusty Trombones

They can't be. That name was already taken. No shit.

No, at least they weren't called The Rusty Trombones... they were called Donkeypunch. Thankfully, they WERE called Donkeypunch, and are now called St. Joe's Mission. To be honest, I suppose bands like this eventually have to change their name if they want to be taken seriously (see: Rainbow Butt Monkeys). Part of me dies a little inside when creative bands have to cave to corporate pressure in order to succeed. At least we'll always have Dutch Oven.

Now that we've gotten the musical taxonomy out of the way, we can talk about how much these guys, whatever they want to be called, rock. I first have to thank Willsy for putting me onto them. Apparently, they're huge in Ottawa, because they won some big cash prize in a local radio station competition. Now, they're trying to ride on this momentum, and with their new name, take on a national audience.

In short, Iain put it best when describing this band; they're just my kind of music. They've described themselves as smug rock. I like to think of it more as simple rock. This is not to use simple in a negative connotation; more akin to the engineering philosophy of Keep it simple, stupid. In a modern field full of pretentious indie rock, electronica, nu-metal, and so many sub genres that we need an almanac to track it all, I respect a band which says, "here is a brilliant riff, here is an appeasing chord progression, here is some vocal harmony, here are some witty lyrics... booyah, we have a wicked song."

Again, this is not to make light of these boys music. Listen to a song like Catholic Girl (from the sexual hitting days) and you can see an incredibly well crafted arrangement of a song, which is still almost impossible not to at least bob your head to. Look ahead at Brand Name Boy (from the helping the homeless days) and you hear lyrics which openly mock themselves and their left-behind immaturity with the line, "my old brain is yellow and black" (a shot at their 2 albums under the Donkeypunch moniker: Yellow and Black, and Yellow and Blacker).

In my simple opinion, this is the type of band which deserves to get a record deal. They've built themselves up from the ground with the simple philosophy of good music, live energy, and enjoying what they do. They do fundraiser shows for cancer research, openly admit they're trying to sell out, and drink enough to make even me apprehensive about a night out with this band.

-Imagine if in the future, office workspaces were all pods on a rollercoaster. That would be fucking awesome.