No. 16 Skank the night away edition
Okay, I’ve been threatening to write this post, which I adapted from a review I wrote for the new Mighty Mighty Bosstones album, for like five months now. The list below is by no means representative of the breadth of artists playing ska and ska-influenced music. I’m a tourist in this scene and I’m sure if you found a lifer, they’d give you a totally different list of artists to check out. But here it goes.
Ska is having a moment.
After two decades as the butt of many, many jokes, the genre unexpectedly found itself on a cultural ascendency in 2020. Much of the newfound interest in skanking can be chalked up to a new generation of artists reinvigorating the genre.
Leading the charge is Ska Tune Network the ska-covers project of Jeremy Hunter. Before the pandemic, Hunter was best known as the trombone player in We Are the Union, but his ska covers of 90s/00s pop-punk bands like Blink-182 and Sum 41 and more modern fare like Oso Oso and Billie Eilish, caught fire during the lockdown.
Hunter has also released a handful of originals under the handle Jer, though those lack the pure exuberance of hearing some of your favourite tracks refracted throuh the ska lens.
Kill Lincoln singer and guitarist Mike Sosinski started Bad Time Records in 2018 after becoming “frustrated by the lack of support the current generation of ska punk bands.” Since then its become one the most notable labels releasing music from new ska bands including Jer, Bad Operation, Catbite and We Are the Union. Kill Lincoln can rock as hard as they can skank, hewing closest to the genre’s basement hardcore roots as any other band on this list. Can’t Complain, their latest, dropped last summer.
IMO, from the new crop of bands (that I’ve heard so far) New Orleans’ Bad Operation hold the most promise to really push things forward. Featuring a bunch of scene vetrans, including members of the Fat Wreck Chords signed Pears, this crew have as much in common with 80s Two Tone and old school R&B as they do the more punk-adjacent third wave bands from the 90s. Their self-titled debut came out in December.
Probably the ska-related band getting the most mainstream attention are The Interrupters, who’s 2018 album Fight the Good Fight landed on the Billboard 200 (at no. 141, but it’s still impressive for an indie ska record in the 2010s). Signed to Tim Armstrong’s Hellcat Records, they basically answer the question, “What if Rancid’s ‘Daly City Train’ was a band with a charismatic frontwoman?”
Finally, if there’s one artist who’s bridged ska’s cultural nadir and it’s newfound critical acceptance, it’s Jeff Rosenstock. He cut his teeth in Long Island, NY ska crew The Arrogant Sons of Bitches, before setting out on his own with digital DIY gods Bomb the Music Industry! and then finally going solo. His critical stock seemed to rise even as each new release bore fewer and fewer ska hallmarks. Then earlier this year, he dropped Ska Dream, a ska makeover of last year’s excellent No Dream bringing his career full circle.
Of course, all this activity begs the question, why now?
The easy answer is nostalgia. It’s been 20 plus years since ska’s commercial peak (and subsequent crash) and the 90s are as hip with Gen Z and the 80s were for Millenials. Time has a way of flattening the imaginary boundaries that we build around artists and genres, which is how Smash Mouth, Whitney Houston, Green Day and Coolio all end up on the same playlist of 90s tunes.
There’s also more specific nostalgia for the “third wave” of ska that brought bands like No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, Save Ferris, Dance Hall Crashers and Goldfinger into the mainstream (and major underground success for groups like Aquabats, the Slackers, and The Planet Smashers etc.). The 2019 doc Pick It Up! Ska in the 90s digs deep into this era and music critic Aaron Carnes just released the book In Defense of Ska the title of which is pretty self-explanatory.
While nostalgia plays an important role, I still think it’s only part of what’s driving interest.
Ska started in Jamaica in the early 1960s, a mixture of jazz, American R&B and mento, the local folk music. Immigrants brought it to England where it caught the ear of working-class kids. Their mutated, punk adjacent version, usually called Two-Tone for the record label that released the scenes major bands including The Specials, The Beat and Madness, reflected the nation’s class struggles as well as racial strife. American bands like Operation Ivy and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones fused two-tone with hardcore (and in the case of Fishbone, funk metal) bringing a message of unity to a pretty violent scene (This is an extremely abbreviated and reductive version of a history on which there have been many books written).
These political themes were dulled, but not forgotten in the 90s ska goldrush where the bouncy, goofy, party side (Hawiian shirts for all!) was given much of the emphasis, making it pretty easy for the general public to dump ska when new, more “serious” sounds came along (mostly nu-metal and garage rock’s white belt era). Ska survived, obviously, returning to its underground roots where new bands (shout out to groups like Streetlight Manifesto and Big D and the Kids Table, and the persistent efforts of Hellcat, Stomp and Asian Man Records) continued to pump new blood into the scene.
Still something flipped in the last couple of years and I think it has to do with ska reclaiming its roots as a tool to fight for social justice. Like the 2010s emo revival, which saw a new generation of bands begin to reappropriate 90s midwest emo for into a less white, less dudes-whining-about-a-girl aesthetic, new ska bands are changing the look and feel of ska, even if its basic tropes remain in place.
Amid last summer’s racial reckoning, Bad Time Records dropped the 28-track Ska Against Racism comp featuring everyone from Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (performing solo as Tim Timebomb) to Hunter. Meanwhile, We are the Union, with whom Hunter plays trombone, recently dropped the first single off their new album Ordinary Life which coincided with singer Reade Wolcott coming out as a trans woman. For decades ska bands have preached for unity and it seems like this moment might finally be one where that word finally applies to everyone.
On the flip side, the number of ska bands still going strong from that late-90s boom period is impressive. As if on cue, in January, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who left the third wave’s most lasting cultural imprint, dropped “The Final Parade,” a ska posse cut featuring a who’s who of the music’s past, present and future: Amy Interrupter, Tim Timebomb, and members of the Specials, Fishbone, Less than Jake, the Aquabats and even Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (from the ska-adjacent late-90s swing revival) to name but a few.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of nations like Canada and the U.S. beginning to reckon with systemic racism and a global pandemic that’s kept everyone locked inside for the past 15 months. It’s a bizarre confluence of factors that’s primed the general public for music that can both denounce racism and start a much-needed party.
Kool Kids Self Promotion Club
Along with the Bosstones record I mentioned at the top, I also recently reviewed Changephobia, the new album from former Vampire Weekend member Rostam.
I also wrote about Softcult, the new band from Phoenix and Mercedes Arn-Horn who previously (still?) play together as Courage My Love, for Exclaim!’s monthly New Favourites section.
Kool Kids Music Recommendation Club
Toronto’s Luna Li has been hovering around a major breakthrough for a while now, making viral videos and collaborating with Dizzy and Moby (of all people) and she’s opening on Japanese Breakfast's fall tour. Before that though she’s dropped new single “Alone But Not Lonely,” which eschews the dreamier qualities of past releases for a more direct, 70s r&b influenced bounce. The song is apparently going to be part of her debut album, though still no word on when that will arrive.
No Frills - the Toronto “bummer pop” band, who are not to be confused with the chain of grocery stores, which also, confusingly, released a mixtape a few years back - dropped their new single “Ice Cream Cone” earlier this year. It’s their first new music since 2018. The band features former members of late great Toronto groups Grounders and Hooded Fang though the track’s laid back vibes and guitar tone kind of reminds me of Shotgun Jimmie being backed by Mac DeMarco. Hopefully there’s more on the horizon.
At first blush Oakland, CA trio Fake Fruit are just another post-punk tinged garage rock band. But spending more than a few minutes with their self-titled debut reveals an under the radar gem grounded in sings Hannah D’Amato’s forceful howl, chronicling the trials and tribulations of traversing digital and IRL social spaces, not to mention the sky-high costs of living in one of North America’s most pricey housing markets.
Suburban Indie Rockstar, the debut EP from Chicago’s Snow Ellet, sits at the nexus of pop-punk, emo and bedroom pop and I’m here for it. The project of Eric Reyes, his vocals sound like nasal-y whine of the “Don’t waste your time on me” line from Blink-182’s “Missing You” expanded into an EP’s worth of material, especially opener “to some i’m a genius.” It’s catnip. I want more.
The Depreciation Guild were a short-lived Pains of Being Pure at Heart-adjacent group who welded the 8-bit blips and bleeps of chiptune with shoegaze. I haven’t heard much else like them (or even really thought about them) since until I stumbled across Hey, ily! The Billings, Montana based project (I’m sure actually people are involved but it’s not hard to just imagine the music being made by the anime-styled character that graces the cover of their new EP Internet Breath) mashes chiptune and shoegaze as well as pop-punk, emo, power-pop and any other microgenre you can think of into compact little tunes. “Dont’ Talk About It (Your Weird Complex)” is the perfect distillation of this aesthetic.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms and submissions.