Published on Jun 27, 2003
A Jackknife To A Swan is pretty
un-ska. They’re busy writing songs about Mafiosos, and the
whole affair sounds more like anthemic chorus-metal to me. The
horns do come up from a triangle in Bermuda to affect the choruses,
but the band seems sick of all that silly skanking business. Good
for them, but we’ve got this whole Bosstone legacy to put to bed,
don’t we?
The up-strokes on the guitars framing “Everybody’s Better” reach
artificial realms previously populated by Rancid whenever they dug
out riffs from their earliest incarnation. This is well done, but
even smelling salts won’t revive ska now. Save Ferris proved
that.
These guys have more in common with metal than ska — at least
their rhythm section does. Dicky sounds like he’s taking vocal
lessons from Lee Ving and David Lee Roth these days too. GG Allin
pops by on the weekends to show him how to properly shit blood as
he croons. “Chasing The Sun,” their most “traditional” song, still
didn’t really get much further than The Bunker Hill Bandits, an
unknown garage band who admitted to stealing their best ideas from
bands like Operation Ivy and The Voodoo Glow Skulls.
I remember when the Bosstones brought out that catchy track
about never having to knock on wood. Great song. In fact, just
mentioning the thing brought it back on a loop in the jukebox
plugged into my skull. “…but I know someone who has. Makes
me wonder if I could…”
I liked the dusty-alleyway-Tom Waits-isms of “Seven Ways” the
best this time. They ended the affair with it, but I was just
getting interested at that point (a budding new direction?). That
wasn’t ska either! Lose the ‘Mighty’ before your name, the
uber-ska, generic ‘Tones’ bit, and just let Dicky sing about
defiling the nearest crucifix with those palm-muting guitars.
To quote Emerson: “Keep it real, aight?”