Less Than Jake: See The Light Review

Less Than Jake have always reminded me of the kind of underachieving friend you had in school. Sure, you grew up with him, had a lot of good times, and still have good times when you meet up, but there came a point when you thought come on, dude, step up your game.

Well, to stretch this metaphor further, the guy has done some night courses, put a deposit on an apartment, bought some nice work shirts and is ready to kick ass. In other words, See The Light is easily the best thing Less Than Jake have done in years, maybe ever. Of course their fans have already taken to Youtube, bemoaning the decline of 'their' band, but I think LTJ are ready to take ska back to the mainstream. (Ok, maybe not, but it's really good guys).

Lead single My Money Is On The Long Shot shows that the band have finally ditched the 'punk' (aka poor) sound of previous albums and embraced easier on the ears production that enhance their melodies. Ska was never meant to be harsh. Madness and Bad Manners were like a warm hug for your eardrums. Now Less Than Jake are ready to become legends.

Opening track Good Enough is classic LTJ, while Jump is one of the best melodic punk songs I've heard in years and is probably my favourite song on the album. The contrast between the dual vocalists is something I always think the band should have used more, and a good chorus is made great because Roger takes it.

The first 5 songs are very strong. It's raining, it's November, but all I want to do is go on a road trip and eat ice cream with my friends! Bless The Cracks seems like it might be a slight sticking point for fans, varying between radio rock and a 77 rehash, but the chorus saves the song for me, would sing along in my bedroom and feel I 'really get the lyrics'/10.

It's not a perfect album, for the record. American Idle sounds like a bad Foo Fighters b-side and Sunstroke is a filler song if I ever heard one. But the lulls are few and always precede a quality song. Most encouraging, besides the better production values, is the step up in songwriting and the brass section.



While they will never reach the level of Streetlight Manifesto, songs like A Short History Lesson and Weekends All Year Long, the two songs that end the album, go a long way in filling the void left by Streetlight. I saw LTJ a few years ago and it remains one of my top 5 shows, this album has me hoping they'll tour near me again and not take 5 years for another release!

Rating: 9/10

GDAC Playlist: King Prawn - The Dominant View

I can't overstate how big the p-rock channel was for me. It was the rabbit hole that I fell into to find punk rock and ska, providing a soundtrack to my teen years. Years later and my friends and I still revert to these songs when drunk or road tripping.



The Dominant View was a song I'd forgotten about until it was played at a house party a few years ago. This song was typical of British p-rock bands; though predominantly (heh) ska and punk, it has a pinch of nu metal. And of course they have a midget playing the bass.

Latvia has a ska band called Band Mango

Up until now the only thing I knew about Latvia was, ehm...well, besides the capital being Riga and the fact that most people there have a classic Baltic pallor, I knew feck all about Latvia! 

But it turns out the Northern European country has a ska punk scene, or at least one ska punk band, called Band Mango. Or sometimes they’re called Band MANGO. I love this shit! The fact that there’s ska in Ireland, a wet, cold rock in the Atlantic is amazing, but ska in a tiny country where the weather is LITERALLY BALTIC?! Amazeballs!

The antics in this video are so similar to how my first bands in rural Ireland acted is scary.  

• Tiny band room to jam in?  Check!
• Lots of walking around outside and hanging around old buildings? Check!
• Skateboarding in an area that is not conducive to skateboarding? Check!

All joking aside, this is really good. I mean, where in the hell did a Latvian Patrick Stump come from?

While this song is probably the best ‘something everyone can enjoy’ single from their EP ‘Lifelong Contract’, there’s also some great Streetlight Manifesto- inspired stuff that zips between intricate brass-led ska, punk and riff-heavy rock.

Readers of this blog know I have a soft spot for European bands with amusing names and questionable English. Band member Jānis (one of two Jānis’ in the group) filled me in with some crucial info and it was hard to tell if he was being funny on purpose, unintentionally hilarious, or if he was fucking with me! 

“We’re one of the most common phenomenons in Latvia,” he says, “taking (a) solid third place just after bad weather and potatoes with cottage cheese.” Well, there you have it.

The band is completed by Konstantins, Ieva, Krists and Reinis. R they a band r a group of vampires, lol. Just kidding guys. But srsly, your names sound like badass vampires.

Band Mango are on Soundcloud and Facebook, check them out.

Another fun fact about Latvia, their currency is Latvian Lats. I love it.

There was a rollerblading version of Tony Hawk's called Aggressvie Inline

Ah the early 2000s.. A time when pop punk and rock were kings of the soundtrack, and extreme sports games like Tony Hawk's and SSX were heavy hitters in the gaming world.

So gritty! Mom's not gonna like this one!

It seems that somewhere in a meeting room a gaming company decided to jump on the extreeeeme bandwagonto be down with the kidz. But instead of picking one of the cool X sports, they went with rollerblading, beloved sport of homosexuals, nerds and crazy middle aged women who really should know better.

'Rollerblading man' on google. Says it all, really.

The gameplay actually looks like it was pretty good, despite my misgivings, and word on tha streetz is that Tony Hawk's stole incorporated some better elements in the game. Even better though, the game came with a sweet soundtrack, typical of the time and filled with punk, nu metal and a bit of ska and hip hop.

This video gives a good taster of what the game was about, including all the Tony Hawk's-like elements and the soundtrack, in this case from a band called Student Rick. NOT TAKING BACK SUNDAY as the uploader of the video angrily proclaims. JEEZ U GUYS, KNOW UR MID-TABLE POP PUNK ALREADY. He also left the character dialogue in, which ruins the song, but it does stay 'honest to the Aggressive Inline experience' according to uploader MexiricanBassMonkey. LOL.

To keep true to the punk roots of inline skating, The Vandals were adding to the soundtrack. All aboard for the non stop to Irony Town! As if The Vandals ever cared about punx roots.

There was also some reaaaally dodgy emo and nu metal, but I'll leave that for now.

Good Days And Cliches Podcast e02: Karaoke Karnage

This week we piece together a weekend that saw our Irish friends visit. One particular night culminated in 5 of us on stage singing karaoke... There's the usual music talk, some film talk, culture difference talk and of course shite talk. Special guest appearance from our friends Brendan and Ciaran.



Songs from Buck-o-Nine, Electric 6, Motorhead, Goldfinger, The Front Bottoms, The Suicide Machines, and an old man singing Gangsters Paradise. Fo' REAL. 

How good is this Under The Sea cover by Suburban Legends

One of the worst things about having a girlfriend into Disney films and Ska/pop-punk is that I have to sit through said Disney films, listen to the songs at various times and then also have to hear various covers of the same songs.

Ah, who am I kidding, it's pretty sweet! The latest find (awhile ago) was this Under The Sea cover from The Little Mermaid by Suburban Legends.

Oh hai girls, we're rebellious but cute!

Of course this makes perfect sense from a marketing point of view for the band:

• Taking an existing song and covering it is a classic technique to get new fans but they have the plus of it being an era-spanning film soundtrack song
• Bonus 'OMG they're so different and DGAF' points for being sensitive enough to like Disney but cool enough not to care is the punx judge them. Maaaan.

I'll eventually check out their other songs (which is exactly what the band want, dammit) but for now I'm happy enough with this find.

MC Lars joins Less Than Jake on stage; Ska-loving nerds get excited

Yours truly is of course one of said ska-loving nerds. Less Than Jake were the most fun when I saw them last year and I've gushed lyrical about MC Lars before on this blog. So when I recently discovered they performed on stage together I, like many others..(okay like a few others at least) have some hope that LTJ ft MCL could happen.

Not sure if anyone really knows what's going on (esp. the two randomers on stage) but more of this plz.

Have you listened to Farse?

Farse clearly had to rely on their music and not their looks/money.

Farse are one of a few bands that received solid rotation on that most joyous of tv stations, P-rock, before disapearing into relative obscurity. But they are still revered by those of us who bust them out on road trips and drinking sessions on the reg. Ska is a dangerous genre to attempt, especially by a group of white lads from the UK without a brass section. Farse however didn’t let this hold them back and wrote some of the best ska-punk singles of all time, brilliantly encapsulating the formula of major keys, backing/dual vox hooks, song structures that are along the lines of ‘so, then we’ll play the same chords but like, heavy, with distortion and stuff’, and a vocal style with more rolls than Galway deli counters go through in a week.

Their biggest hit (or at least my favourite song) is Hopskotch, a minute and a half of energy and hooks!

•  No idea of the lyrics..don't think there were any official lyrics..
• DEM rrrrolls!
• Such a DIY video, srsly, there's about 50 seconds of footage hacked together and copied/pasted
• Is Rasta dude at 00.27 in the band or not? He pops up a few times...
• And then it's over and I want moar!

And with wanting more of the same in mind, it's lucky that they stick tight to their forumula for most of their songs

•  How should we start it...another drum intro? deadly.
• 'hey how about you sing woahs instead of hah! at the end of my lines, and then we can sing back and over in the chorus, I mean it worked once..' 'sweet, yeah let's go with that.'
• DEM RRROLLLS. Best thing ever.
• 1.01 - harmonies, noice.
• Bass/drum bridge with scratching over it = nevar not cool!
• And back to the chorus, here we go again you say?
• MOAR.

This is more punk rock I guess...

• Srsly, you can't say they got attention for their looks..and is he wearing his own tshirt at 00.08
• Super DIY videos ftw, clearly an old house belonging to a relation...
• Yep I can confirm he's wearing a farse tshirt. Were they really that poor?
• 00.36 lololol
• I love that the one dude in the denim is clearly TRYING TO STAY TRUE to his metal/rock roots and probably joined just to be in a band.
•  Makes me nostalgic for the days of playing in a shitty room in a band made up of ppl who just wanted to be in a band tbh
• Wood pay top dollar for a farse t-shirt
• Drummer is pretty good I think?
• Dat miming to the outro, haha

I know they'll only appeal to a certain type of person who grew up not knowing that ppl who like ska aren't meant to like metal and you can't be punk without being super lame about politics and not having fun.