Review Summary: Lagwagon goes down a darker route, but comes out on a brighter side.
In 1994 the punk explosion of bands like Green day, Rancid and The offspring helped Punk or "Pop-punk" to infiltrate the mainstream music scene, making both the bands and the genre a huge commercial success. The timing was perfect, as a lot of people were ready for some more upbeat and fast driven music in the mainstream, after a few years of Grunge dominating bands controlling the airwaves, with more heavy and introverted music and lyrics.
One of the lesser commercial successful bands, Lagwagon, (home of Fat Wreck Chords owned and run by Fat mike from Nofx), didnt explode into instant stardom like some of the aforementioned bands, but they did experience huge underground success and still to this day is praised in helping and shaping the sound of many modern melodic punk bands around today. Their frontman, Joey Cape, has since branched out and gone on to form more indie sounding acts such as, Bad Astronaut, Afterburner, The playing favorites and other various side projects and has reamained a creative driving force in both the punk and rock community throughout the nineties and the new millenium.
In 1997 Lagwagon released the album Double plaidinum and I think I can safely say that this is probably the most discussed and controversial of the all the Lagwagon albums released. The spark of these discussions mainly comes from the albums production and the general experimentation in both the songwriting and playing style. The band had lost two core members before the recording, forcing them to bring in a new drummer and a new guitar player before writing the record, which shows as the album differs from previous Lagwagon albums, while at the same time fits in perfectly with the rest of their discography.
The album sounds very heavy and distorted, with the bass turned way up in the mix, while the guitars sometimes sound like they were recorded through a broken amp, giving a very bleak and almost hurting fell to some of the songs. The album doesnt have a strong standout track in the veins of Violins and Island of shame from former albums (although Making Friends, Alien 8 or Twenty-seven all could qualify as strong contenders), but I thinks it gives the album a much more coherent and natural flow, as some "single or radio" songs tend to separate themselves from the more traditional sounding album tracks and in some cases destroy the flow of certain records. The Lyrics deal with broken friendships and general inner confusion, in a way Lagwagon didnt quite address on previous releases. Joey Cape is clearly affected by the loss of two founding members of the band and this contributes to some of the most straightforward and yet most poetic lyrics of his carrer. The lyrics are more dark and introverted than before while the music, while still maintaining the pop-punk sound of previous albums, is a lot heavier and sounds like it is fighting its way through the record, rather than the more joyful playing seen on Trashed and Hoss.
The album is definitely one of Lagwagons harder albums to get into and general fans of the pop-punk genre might dismiss the album on the first few listens as a confusing and almost difficult listen, compared to the more clean production sound found on albums from bands like Fall out boy, Yellowcard and so on. But I truly believe that the unusual production, combined with the heartfelt lyrics, gives the album an edge and longevity, which sets it apart from a lot of the other punk releases of the nineties. The album builts a perfect bridge between the sound found in the Grunge movement and the sound of the current punk/emo scene and thereby makes it an interesting listen for anyone who is into both punk and more alternative music.
