Album Review : Finally Punk - Casual Goths
- Written by Greg Salter
If low-fi, DIY approaches to music and recording have recently come back around (blame it on the recession, or the tastes of those mysterious individuals who direct this kind of thing, or both) then its important to note that Finally Punk formed in 2005 and several of the songs that have found their way onto Casual Goths date from that far back – long before Vivian Girls emerged from New York then, or Wavves crawled out of his bedroom. Finally Punk favour a rawer sound, eschewing the tendency to temper their punk leanings with pop melody.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Finally Punk specialise in short, sharp, dissonant bursts of noise – Casual Goths squeezes a mammoth 26 songs into a mere 30 minutes. Vocal duties and instruments are constantly swapped by the quartet, made up of Erin Budd, Stephanie Chan, Veronica Ortuno, and Elizabeth Skadden. Casual Goths is very much the product of the four years of touring and recording, bringing together the group’s three previous, very limited EPs on this equally limited long player.
Finally Punk successfully manage to update the sound and approach of bands that were part of the riot grrrl movement and those associated with it, particularly Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and early Sleater-Kinney. They are also reminiscent of earlier post punk or no wave artists, such as The Raincoats and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Praise has come recently from people like Karen O and Beth Ditto, though Finally Punk have none of the mainstream appeal of their celebrity fans – they are four girls dedicated to making a primitive racket, but they’re not trying to alienate their audience.
Tracks like the short tongue in cheek riots of ‘What The Fuck, Missile?’ and ‘Five Year Old Angst’ work brilliantly, like tantrums screeched over the most basic of backings. Their cover of Nirvana’s ‘Negative Creep’ is another highlight, preceded by the announcement: ‘Kurt Cobain is dead/I am not Kurt Cobain/But I am a negative creep’.
The ferocity of their sound, however, is constantly tempered with a sense of humour – ‘Redneck Gout Club’ sounds exactly like what you’d expect a redneck gout club to sound, all within 50 seconds, while ‘Dear Diary, Men Are Pigs’ is the best song title I’ve heard in ages. Meanwhile ‘Boyfriend Application’ reels off a list of questions for prospective partners before the shouted chorus of ‘Do you wanna/Be my boyfriend?/Fill out/This application’.
Over the whole thirty minutes, it’s interesting to hear how Finally Punk’s sound has developed, from bare bones racket to more fleshed-out, (slightly) longer tracks that take a more varied approach to songwriting. With their DIY aesthetic, the quartet certainly find themselves in fashion at the moment, but at the same time there is a force and humour to these songs and their great, shouted vocals that means Finally Punk have plenty to offer riot grrrls (and boys) everywhere.