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Wake Up With Alkaline Trio
By Dan Greenman
Alkaline Trio is the perfect name for this band. In 1996 they entered
the Chicago music scene full of energy like a brand new set of AA batteries.
They kept their punk-influenced indie rock energy alive through two
EPs and two LPs before they moved to the wildly successful independent
label Vagrant Records.
Good Mourning, the group's fourth full-length studio album (fifth if
you count a self-titled compilation of various early releases), offers
the traditional Alkaline Trio sound, but the battery seems to be running
out of juice. It comes out on May 13 and follows 2001's From Here To
Infirmary (by now you should start to see an album title theme), which
was by far the band's most commercially successful effort, thanks to
the backing of Vagrant.
All of the elements of a Trio album are there on Good Mourning. Guitarist
Matt Skiba writes and sings the majority of the tracks, while bass player
Dan Andriano delivers five songs. As usual, Skiba's fast-paced songs
incorporate dense metaphors and dark images of death, drugs and booze,
and Andriano's tunes, slowed down a step and slightly more pop, veer
toward love.
The album just seems to be missing that special something that established
the band as one of the best in the genre. Skiba opens the record, singing
“I've got a book of matches, I've got a can of kerosene” on
the song “This Could Be Love” and you think it's still the
same old Alkaline Trio. But sometime during the second song, “We've
Had Enough,” you realize that things have, in fact, changed.
While Skiba's lyrics are clever as always, they don't have that raw
emotion they used to. When Skiba sang “I've got it now/A thorn
in my side the size of a Cadillac” in “Ninety-Seven,”
one of the band's oldest songs, you could feel the heartache.
But on “We've Had Enough,” when Skiba sings, “We've had
enough/Please turn that fucking radio off,” you know he could have
thought up something more provocative. If the song is good for nothing
else, at least Keith Morris, the legendary singer of Black Flag and
the Circle Jerks, can be heard yelling in the background. Skiba finally
comes to life on “Continental,” the album's fourth song, when
he screams, “You had nine lives and one by one you chewed them
up,” and his guitar goes into one of its signature reverb-heavy
riffs, and at last, you believe him.
Andriano's songs have almost always served as background content for
the band's records - not because they are inferior to Skiba's, but because
next to the energy in Skiba's songs, they give the listener something
to absorb while he or she takes a breather. Andriano's songs on Good
Mourning fill this role again. His voice is soothing over muted power
chords as he sings, “This bed is too big to sleep in/ And I am
dying just to feel you breathe” on the song “100 Stories”
and asks, “Were you planning on staying forever?” on “If
We Never Go Outside.”
The album closes with Skiba alone with an acoustic guitar, singing “Blue
in the Face.” This solo acoustic approach is something the Trio
haven't attempted since their debut, Goddamnit.
This could be the Trio's breakthrough album, the one that gains them
airtime on commercial radio stations and maybe even MTV. And rightfully
so: it is a good record. But it is a little disappointing to think of
people finally discovering the band with this release, and not with
the much stronger first two or three albums.
Hopefully the next time around, the Alkaline Trio will recharge.
Dan Greenman is a senior journalism major. Email him at dgreenm1@ithaca.edu.
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