How many times do you see “Sigma Nu” listed amongst the thank yous on a punk album? If you need any more proof of punk’s mainstreaming, let fraternity membership be the final argument. As our popular society gets more complicated and faster paced, so does our popular music get grittier and more aggressive. Thus do Local Nothing, among the best of a slew of young bands to come out of the Saco/Thorton Academy area, seem almost quaint for their blitzkrieg guitars and shouted vocals.
The Stones once made waves by pissing off conservatives and feminists alike with “Under My Thumb.” That song featured a xylophone. Can you play a xylophone at 180 beats per minute?
With one exception, that’s the only way it could find its way onto a Local Nothing tune, and, of course, the idealism of young bands past has been firmly replaced by resignation and disappointment. How does melancholic nostalgia set in so quickly nowadays?
Still, Local Nothing manage to be fairly unpredictable on their new seven-song EP, The Last Chance to Make Things Right, as they operate within this crowded and likely soon-to-fade pop-punk genre. They are alternately heavier and more subtle than you might expect, the album is structured with forethought and flow, and the songwriting is inventive and straight-ahead at the same time. Maybe that’s the result of good educations. Guitarist/frontman Pete Vachon is at the Montserrat College of Art, guitarist Mike Roy is at the Art Institute of New England, bassist Adam Croteau is at USM, and drummer Andre Tranchemontagne is working with his chef brother at the upscale restaurant Uffa, in Longfellow Square.
The album opens with “Intro” (naturally), a one-minute snippet that features a shouted beginning, followed by somewhat aimless guitars and drums that are frantic as hell and full of cymbals, crashing and careening about. “Who said I want to do this by myself?,” frontman Pete Vachon half-screams, “I don’t need the help from anyone else.” You see what I mean about contradictions. Then it’s over as soon as it began. For a band that won’t strike you as overly literary (the liner notes could have used an edit), it feels remarkably like a prologue for a work that also features an all-acoustic epilogue.
“Take a Seat” then opens the album proper by borrowing the swirling, antagonizing guitars that often open hardcore songs. You can easily imagine Vachon staring at the ground, gearing up for the explosion that comes about 30 seconds into the song. It’s a classic breakup tune, as our hero gets some bad news: “Good luck breathing with that knife in your lungs” — backing shouts support the line for emphasis, in case that knife-in-the-lungs part didn’t grab your attention. I’m struck once again by how harmony has been replaced by discord in one of today’s more popular musical forms.
That seems telling, to me.
