Paul Cafcae - You Cannot Get To Heaven (Cafcae Records)

Social commentary, sideways looks at the world, and rhetorical questions about all aspects of life have never been far below the surface of many of Paul Cafcae’s songs. Punk rock, however, is a new one for me. But this is Paul Cafcae we are talking about, so I wouldn’t take a term like punk rock at face value, not when it comes from his more sophisticated sonic world.

If you associate punk with short, sharp, and sadly, more often than not, shockingly awful three-chord salvos with little to say bar the usual pre-pubescent moan and no new musical direction – the sound of garage rock having stormed off in a huff and relocated to the shed – then think again.

Paul’s take on the genre is akin to what Elvis would have been serving up if punk had not been born in the low-rent venues of NYC’s Lower East Side or London’s West End in ’76 but had crawled out of the blues clubs of Chicago and mingled with the truck stop venues of the South two decades earlier.

“You Cannot Get To Heaven” is raw and riotous, rockabilly on amphetamine, country rock coked out of its brain, rock and roll with no off switch, and lyrically, that perfect blend of innocence and menace that we associate with those early days, before everyone started taking themselves so seriously.

Call it punk if you like, but even though “You Cannot Get To Heaven” is a direct and uncomplicated song, its clever juxtapositions of poise and punch, muscle and melody—opposites that attract—stand it head and shoulders above such a genre.

Punk? Nah, it’s better than that, so much better.

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