The brilliantly named Gas Station Boner Pills have always been great with a song (and indeed EP’s) title, not necessarily controversial (although sometimes, yes, controversial) but certainly eye-catching, and one scan across the songs on their new album, again memorably titled Welcome to the Shit Show shows that they haven’t lost their touch.
The music that drives this humor is made at that classic punk-garage rock interface; it is suitably fast, furious, and full of frantic froth, but it is the lyrics that set these guys apart from the pack, or at least the anthemic, party-starting, sense of euphoric abandon that lays at the heart of the songs. It’s loud, it’s lewd, it’s suggestive, it’s sensational.
I remember when the punk-pop brigade used to try this approach and just came across as pre-pubescent frat boys who got upset when their mother asked them to clean their room. No, this is the real deal, punchy rather than merely puerile, the songs the stuff of real life mined for their black humor and satirical spins rather than dick gags and toilet humor, Although when you hit songs such as “Masturbation Procrastination,” the divide does narrow somewhat, but that’s okay.
If there is a handy reference point, and it is probably one that most of my US friends will scratch their heads at, it is The Macc Lads, a sweary punk band from the industrial north of England, whose iconic album Beer & Sex & Chips n Gravy gave us such unforgettable, x-rated songs as “Sweaty Betty.” (Check ‘em out.)
Welcome to the Shit Show is a great album, fist-in-the-air, shout-along punk full of wit, and, in its upside-down way, wisdom, at least fifth pint bar room wisdom. And if Gas Station Boner Pills are this great on the album, imagine how much fun you are going to have when you see them live!
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