Bob Dylan once asked "How long can you search for what isn't lost?" and Spider Bags replyi is their astounding third album, Shake My Head, which is like finding something you've always had. The greatest punk rock album of them all and an instantaneous classic.
I've been listening to the Durham, NC's locals new album for around two weeks, not wanting to review it quite yet, because I was afraid I was gonna look like an ass by overstating the case. But how can you overstate the case for this ten song, full throttle punk rock album? Every song is the song of the year, a couple are the song of the decade, and while this isn't a step forward, backward or in any direction, it stands as much more than an exercise in righteous good time rock and roll.
Dan McGee has been around for years and I've written about him many times, both as DC Snipers and as Spider Bags. The Bags first album, 2007 A Celebration Of Hunger, with the mindboggling greatness of "Waking Up Drunk" along with waltzes, country stompers, folk modular and more, was possibly the best album of that year.Seeped in hard drugs, alcoholism, divorce and disaster, it rocked intensely. But the follow-up, for all its powers, and, born into a vacuum of rock that it allowed the air back in, and despite the fabulous "Long White Desert Rose", Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World was a sophomore effort in every sense of the word. On a curve, and just because who the band is, it was a disappointment.
According to Odessa Record Label owner Paul Finn, the recording session in Memphis was one long rock and roll party, with local legends like Jack Oblivion and Shawn Cripps joining Dan and bassist Gregg Levy at engineer Andrew McCalla's home. The result is an album without ups and downs -it is straight forward, relentless brilliant rock and roll. The first song an old time rock and roll stomper with a great lyric, the second song a Stax inspired raver, the third a punk rock, the fourth a Brit Invasion shifter, the fifth a James Brown cover (you heard, and a well done one, that makes a point with the great man), the sixth the nominal best song on the album…
Well, you get the point.
By the time your each the last song, a psychedelic workout, there is nothing really to say. There is nothing to say. I have nothing to say about this album. Okay, maybe I have something to say: it is about all the folks who will die in the same place they were born in. It is about meaningless lives whittled away doing, drugs, smoking blunts, drinking too much, marrying and divorcing and spinning through their life with nothing to add to the conversation. It is a celebration of neither hunger, nor, unlike Bruce, being born to run. It is being satiated and still wanting something else, it is about but being born to chase your own tail thru your own life.
It is loser rock and rolls for losers like me: it doesn't romanticize its fateful hard rocking knocking it all out ethos but on song after song, it has the sweetness of an escape from the sad and the mundane.
Dan is in great voice, the band is actually really tight, even when going off in separate directions like "Shawn Cripps Boogie" and especially on the most typical "Daymare" – a Stonesy washed out country blues.
I dunno, maybe I am too big a fan to be trusted, but I kinda think we've got the album of the year right here. This is like finding something that wasn't lost, a great rock and roll album. It is out today.
Grade: A+