Although I haven't explored it much on this blog as yet, one of my keenest interests is in musical fakery - the hoaxes, hucksters, rip-off artists, satirists, plagiarists, and wannabes lurking just at the fringes of the industry. There's tons of Ramones-clones clogging up the discount bins with subnormal pop punk records about girls and beer and various things they either wanna or don't wanna do. Hanson Brothers exist somewhere in this continuum, but simultaneously on a whole other Kaufmanesque level too. As the retarded flipside of Canadian spazzy jazz-punk wizards NoMeansNo, they still sing about girls and beer (and hockey) but there's also a strain of fierce technical prowess and bristling intelligence lurking beneath the three-chords-and-two-verses formula that belies their origin. They embrace the haiku-like Ramones recipe as a framework, not as a finished product.Still, this doesn't come off as some snooty hipster slumming. Make no mistake, this is 100% sincere. This is their third album, a punchy return to form after the somewhat underwhelming Sudden Death and also a bold slapshot to the rules. The classic first LP Gross Misconduct is dissected at length here. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's a joke.
Honey I'm Home
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