Music Band, along with JEFF the Brotherhood and Diarrhea Planet, forms the Infinity Cat triad, the latest representatives of the Nashville indie punk scene. I’ll readily admit to being a big DP fan - I’ve seen them four times, once with JEFF and once with Music Band. I knew these were DP’s buds, so I had high expectations. JEFF was headlining that DP/JEFF show, and I actually left halfway through the JEFF set; maybe I was tired, but JEFF came off as self-indulgent sludgy rock that only the hairy 250+ pound dudes were into. And while DP always lived up to their ridiculous name - a bunch of fun, amiable dudes who probably wake up laughing - Music Band lived up to their generic name: a rock band playing straightforward riffs that only the Wayne Campbells were into (totally radical, dude!!) The first few songs of Music Band’s Wake Up Laughing remind me of that show, but the second half has riffs that I gotta admit are totally righteous. Though it starts off slow, and the lyrics are consistently boring, the back-half instrumentals of Wake Up Laughing gives me some hope for Infinity Cat’s lineup beyond DP.
The first three songs - “Day Stealer,” “Don’t Call Upon Me,” and “Green Lights” - bring me back to that generic show. But even more so they remind me of DP songs where Brent Toler is the lead-singer (e.g., “Platinum Girls” and “Field of Dreams”): Unconvincing lyrics about being a bad-boy player (in “Don’t Call Upon Me,” the singer confesses that he “wants to do bad things with you,” then more or less repeats the title for the rest of the song) and cliche-ridden imagery (e.g., “now there’s a storm cloud up above my head” and “hit green lights the whole way home”). These are often the kind of DP songs that I skip, but I guess there’s always an audience for a seeming bad-boy.
The next two songs “Money” and “Keep Living” continues the cheesy imagery - the former laments about “hanging ten on a wave of loneliness” while the latter employs dark clouds for a second time - but this is also where the instrumentals start to get interesting. The guitar on “Money” has an eastern-ish vibe, and the subtle two percussion lines are a nice touch. “Keep Living” is a slow, worthwhile buildup, delivering a badass guitar line that, admittedly, brings up the Wayne Campbell in me. For some reason, Music Band's best songs start with this second half of the album.
This 2-minute rock song + 1-minute jam equation continues on “5th Street” and “Fortune Guns” - kind of like the punk-version of formulaic crescendo porn that post-rock is accused of - but hey, it works, for the most part. “5th Street” is one of the few songs where the singing doesn’t sound totally nonchalant, and “Fortune Guns” has an incredible drum line, but it’s a shame that Music Band wasted it on a joke guitar line.
The final songs are pairs: “Raag” Pt. 1 and 2 and “Scarab Music” Pt. 1 and 2, highlighting the faint strokes of eastern influences on this album. It’s unclear why these songs are divided into parts - either because Music Band is scared to release seven-minute songs, or because they wanted to make it more clear where the “rock song” and the “jam song” parts of their formula were. My favorite song(s) on the album have got to be “Scarab Music;” the instrumental Pt. 1 is very Led-Zeppelin-like, with a distinct acoustic guitar line followed by heavy riffs and obligatory organ, while Pt. 2 focuses on a driving, one-two punch guitar line that really brings Music Band into their own and follows Led Zeppelin to bring it on home to close the album.
All in all, Music Band has serious musicians to make nuanced (but still easy to consume) instrumentals, reminding us to keep Nashville punk rock on our radar. However, I’m really disappointed by the vocals and lyrics on this album. Honestly, if DP didn’t have Jordan Smith to sing about ghosts with boners and shogun going against their customs, maybe DP would be close to something like Music Band. If they can manage to write more than uncommitted love songs, Music Band might eventually release some of today’s better punk music.
