I appreciate humor in music. Being a literary nerd, there's nothing more satisfying than catching a good pun or play on words in the midst of a steady rock beat. Unfortunately, little in today's music scene really delivers. Metalcore (a slowly dying dinosaur), and whatever you call it that Three One G puts out (art school grind-punk?) goes for the laugh but almost always misses. Their take on sharp humor mostly comes off as scathing irony that sounds more like bitter social commentary.
Looking at the larger acts, a lot of the dick and fart humor in music vanished with the departure of Blink-182, but their slapstick was replaced with snarky one-liners penned by the new pop-punk darlings, Fall Out Boy. While Pete Wentz's lyrics do contain elementary traces of wit, they aren't so much funny as they are "cute"; their humor is pretty limited to cracking jokes about boys and girls desperate to fit in and fall in love. With this said, there's little out there to give us a hearty chuckle along with some sweet jams; unless of course, you consider Piebald.
With their newest album in roughly three years, in comes Piebald encouraging us to shake our asses and rattle our brains a little. Leaving the issues of love and relationships for the youngsters to squabble over, these Bostonians decide to sing about life's simple pleasures, like riding your bike ("Roll On"), not becoming obsessed with success ("A Friend of Mine"), and everybody's favorite, transcendentalism ("Nature Wins"). Each song is poignant in a conversational way, sparing all the dressed up poetics instead adding just the right pinch of tongue-in-cheek humor.
WithAccidental Gentlemen, Piebald has almost totally eradicated the rhythm based power chord formula that composed a lot of their work on Big Wheel Recreation. Moving their sound towards a bigger, riff based sound you can really hear that Piebald has succeeded in what they were trying to accomplish with their last album, All Ears, All Eyes, All the Time. Sticking with the comparisons to their last album, it is clear to see that Travis Shettel has also learned to really use piano parts effectively in their song writing giving them the sound of both lite-rock while as well as the E Street Band.
Accidental Gentlemen proves that that Piebald is no longer the band you've come to know, but still the band you've come to love. And that's no joke.
