Dragged Under - Upright Animals

I knew there was a reason i was procrastinating reviewing Dragged Under's sophomore album, i just didn't know what it was. I do know why i haven't officially reviewed their first album. It's because that first album is mired in the troubled transition from Rest, Repose to Dragged Under. I like The World Is In Your Way very much, but l also know that Tony and Fluff understand the demographic i represent because they directly addressed it in interviews. Rest, Repose felt like pulling teeth (that's foreshadowing) for them because A) it was a completely DIY slog through wishy washyness, frustrating lineup changes, and a hung jury on whether or not everyone actually wanted to full-on tour, and B) all that for something that really didn't feel true to themselves. I get it, Rest, Repose was definitely not exciting big-crowd concert material. Dragged Under's mashup of Metalcore with catchy-as-hell Pop-Punk choruses certainly is. I also get the feeling that you're going to alienate a bunch of fans by pointing out how much of a lack of enjoyable you feel about the music that made us fans. So, while i'm over it and i fully enjoy listening to The World Is In Your Way now because i'm a big boy who puts on big boy pants every morning, it's pretty much impossible to not bring all that into the review. So i won't. 

Instead we'll skip ahead to Upright Animals, the album they want us to listen to and dissect and contemplate so that we might get back on the path to treating each other a whole lot better than the abysmal way we're treating each other right now. That i can do. 

They just got back from their European tour, and its a doozy of a Spinal Tap story for their future grandkids to roll their eyes at. Clerical errored work visas, vitally important baggage that somehow got left off that flight over the Atlantic Ocean, spontaneous root canals and lost voices in England without insurance (because we're musicians), rented equipment not working right, sounds like pretty normal fun times for a band on tour. They did it, though, so that's pretty freakin' awesome. So is the album. 

I read somewhere that Tony felt a bit like "oh crap, that first album was basically my diary, what the hell am i going to write about?," but i don't hear any of that. It's a pretty coherent collage about confronting all the ways our own self-hatred makes the whole world worse. It's pretty much straight down the checklist: predatory behaviour, divorce, suicide, theocratic fascism, social isolation (with or without a pandemic exacerbating it), the fear-mongering of mainstream media, and the nasty generational crisis we're having in the economic boxing ring of 'murica. 

As hinted earlier, i see the band through Fluff-tinted spectacles, which is much different from discovering a new band in a more, shall we say, organic manner. For good or bad, he's put a lot of his personal life into his youtube brand, and that makes it surprisingly hard to be even remotely objective. You could have a completely different take on it if you came from a different vantage point, but it's pretty much impossible for me to imagine what that would be like. I wouldn't be saying anything he didn't already put out there, but how much personal stuff like previous jobs and relationships and John Deere tractors should i bring into this thing? None, i've decided. Vultures in suits playing Stonks! is the cover art (for the memely challenged among us). It's an album from a Seattle-based band on a Dutch record label, and their MO is pretty simple and foolproof: big heavy riffs with catchy sing-along choruses. Mission accomplished twice, dudes. Here's to hoping a 3rd one happens. 

Which brings us back to me. Me, me, me. I'm not famous (and i don't want to be), so surely i want something from buying most of the albums i write about and tagging the bands whenever i can for my single digit of active followers to thumbs up or completely ignore (not an insult to anyone, by the way). Nope, i do it because 1) i feel like it, 2) you can click on that tag link if you want to go check them out, because 3) that's how word of mouth works, and Frog Fingers) it's fun. Honesty is addictive. 

If you've learned only 1 thing from my nearly 4 years of writing into the ether as Bottle the Curmudgeon, i sincerely hope it's that the world actually runs on wealth and privilege being surreptitiously synonymous, and i say "no thank you, that's a bag of suck." I want the world to run on smiles and thank yous and being honestly nice, and there's not a damned thing you can do to stop me.