Post-9/11, post-invasion of Iraq, many lamented the lack of protest music in response. Alternative music seemed like the perfect place for such sounds to come from, but after Conor Oberst’s (Bright Eyes – QRO album review) insipid “When the President Talks To God”, bands either shied away or sung in generalities. However, the left’s rush to connect with ‘red state America’, combined with new pro-soldier feelings, had a larger, more background effect, as the sounds of Middle America wormed their way into alternative rock. The indie side of things went alt-country, for better (see Jenny Lewis – QRO album review ) or for worse (see Conor Oberst, now with The Mystic Valley Band – QRO album review), but the punk side embraced a ‘workingman’s flavor’ running from Woody Guthrie to Bruce Springsteen (QRO live review). The recent economic collapse has only heightened this ‘working-class punk’, and it takes another step forward with Red Collar’s debut LP, Pilgrim.
The Durham, North Carolina band began in western Pennsylvania (i.e., two parts of ‘real America’ that voted for Obama anyway…), but their sound owes as much to The Boss & Washington, D.C.’s more politically minded, Discord Records punk. Red Collar well combines workingman, punk, anthem, rock, press, and more on such tracks as “Radio On”, “Rust Belt Heart”, and especially the last two numbers, “Used Guitars” and “Catch a Ride”. Those two are told from working-class points of view, the ‘music dream deferred’ of a used guitar salesman and the struggling, used-up ex-mill worker, respectively, something the band taps into very well – “Used Guitars” is heartbreaking in a “Best Days of My Life” kind of way, while “Catch a Ride” is a finishing ode to the dying days of the working class.
Unfortunately, not all the songs on Pilgrim stand out like that. Opener “The Commuter” is run-of-the-mill with chorus lines like “Get a job!” and “Working overtime!”, while the darker, stop-start “Tools” isn’t special. Meanwhile, the title track & single “The Astronaut” are both rather indistinct – though the stripped, echoing “Tonight” isn’t the ‘woe is life’ ballad from most working-class punk, but rather possesses emotional heft, and loss-rocker “Stay” has neat breakdowns.
The trials & tribulations of the Bush Administration may not have given America “Blowin’ In the Wind” or “Nowhere Man” (or even “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg”…), but has enabled alternative music to embrace the flyover states more than ever before, from stripped, soul-bearing alt-folk to the working-class punk-rock of Red Collar on Pilgrim.
