Review Summary: An underrated classic that reinvented the punk genre, and never got the credit for it.
The very first vinyl record I bought was Knuckle Puck’s The Weight that You Buried. It’s not a particularly good EP, but I believed I was buying a piece of punk rock history. The first time I heard No Good I thought, punk rock will never be the same after this, this is when it’ll all change. Knuckle Puck partly lived up to this promise, before fizzing out and losing the energy that courses through No Good.
I was in my 20’s when I bought The Weight that Your Buried. I didn’t even own a record player or speakers, so I couldn’t even listen to it, but I was ecstatic to own it, and felt like I had acquired a physical piece of history being made. At the time, I did backbreaking work in a warehouse at night. It was on-call work, and you’d never know if or when you’d get called in. I would wake up mid-morning, aching from my shift the night before, spend half my day commuting to and from university, and what little time I had left studying and shirking my responsibilities.
“I’ve been having a horrible time” would play in my ears and I’d stare out the window of the bus and wonder if I’d get enough shifts that week to pay rent. The Menzingers, Banner Pilot, The Wonder Years, Angels & Airwaves all frequented my eardrums. The post-punk bands that arose as the party anthems of pop-punk fizzled out in the new post-2008 world became the crutch my soul leaned on. Bands playing in the shadow of the Global Financial Crisis. A new type of punk emerged then, it was very self-aware of its poverty and struggles, it was gritty and the lyrics didn’t speak of parties and alcohol or drug use but of how things are and how they used to be. On The Impossible Past no doubt looks back on a pre-2008 world with nostalgia while struggling with the present. I would skate with my friends past midnight on Saturday nights, we would swap new punk bands and songs we’d discovered. I often asked myself, where will punk go next? Will it evolve into what was promised on The Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come? Or would it go back to the party anthems of pop-punk?
The second vinyl record I bought, after many years of searching, was Banner Pilot’s Collapser. A titanic record that represented to me the apotheosis of this new grittier and more poverty orientated punk sound that permeated the post-2008 milieu. It was a record that stood on the shoulders of the titans of the punk scene and proclaimed, this is it, this is as good as this genre gets. It was a mature record, a mastering of its art.
The third vinyl record I bought was Proper Dose, only this year. Proper Dose came and went without much recognition or fanfare. Looking back, I never would have called it one of my favourite albums, or one of the greatest punk records, even for years after its release. This is odd to think about in hindsight. Was it released at the wrong time? Was it too far ahead of its time and listener base? There is so much that is new and inventive on this album, it breaks new ground and reinvents old territory. It takes risks, and it completely nails it. That takes genius. How many experimental albums can come close to creating a new sound and doing it this well? Proper Dose doesn’t have a single song I would skip, and in the vinyl medium, that elevates an album even further. This may sound hyperbolic, but I don’t think it is – I truly believe that Proper Dose is on the same level as The Shape of Punk to Come. Who would have thought that punk would go in this direction? And sound so good doing it? Compare Proper Dose to Enema of the State, and then again to the self-titled that showed an early hint at the departure that punk was capable of, from its more hard-edged roots.
Today, my wayward and lost 20’s have given way to my maturing 30’s. My back is ruined from my (six) years of work in the warehouse, with several herniated discs that shape my day to day. But, I have a nice house in a nice suburb, I have a senior role in an investment firm, and a beautiful fiancé and a baby on the way. I also now own a record player and speakers. After I’ve finished cleaning on the weekend, I pop a diclofenac potassium to ease the agonising pain in my back, I put Proper Dose on the record player, and I lay back with my fiancé on the couch to relax. She doesn’t enjoy The Weight That You Buried, but she does like relaxing to the lush sounds of Upside Down flowing from the speakers. Parker's voice explores new areas sonically as the rest of the band puts their instruments to new and inventive uses. Palm-muted chords have given way to beautiful melodies, the introspection takes on more transformative thoughts. We discuss the past, often looking back with nostalgia, other times wondering how we managed to overcome all of the things we’ve been through. We worry about the future, and whether we’ll get through all of the challenges ahead. Whether we’ll ever heal from life.
Parker Cannon plays through all of this as the turntable spins. He reminds us that even tragedy is beautiful, and often the most beautiful art is tragedy. The flip side of that is also true, love is the most beautiful thing we have and inspires the most beautiful art. Proper Dose has both, love and tragedy. It is a work of genius, a transformative classic, but most importantly, it is a moving and enjoyable work of art.
Isn’t life so intoxicating that it can have such beauty in its Upsides and its Downs.
