Anthem [Us Import]

Less Than Jake

Anthem arrives at a time when Florida's gregarious and fast-but-by-no-means-furious ska-punks Less Than Jake can safely be referred to as veterans of this peculiarly American genre. Nevertheless, in defiance of their relatively advancing years, Anthem is stuffed to the gills with accelerated (albeit formulaic) punk-pop songs addressing the trials and tribulations of dull part-time jobs, girl-trouble, leaving home and walking on the cracks in the pavement; an array of uniquely adolescent concerns that ought to sound rather imbecilic when shouted from the mouths of fully-grown men. So who's kidding whom? While there's plenty of pumped-up empathising with their teen audience--"Do you know how your insecurities are the same ones that are inside of me?" enquires the dating-game analysis of "Plastic Cup Politics"--there is the lingering suspicion that, musically and thematically speaking, Less Than Jake remain stuck in a state of arrested development. Songs with titles as enticing as "Best Wishes to Your Black Lung" and "Escape from the 'A' Bomb House"--both of which illustrate Less Than Jake's atypical penchant for Grant Hart-style drum-pummelling and breakneck-paced Dexys Midnight Runners-style brass--don't quite attain the imaginativeness of their titles, and the best number here is clearly a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender". However, many of Less Than Jake's similarly styled subordinates have grown far richer on far less accomplished work than this. And if there is such a thing as dues-paying justice, Anthem ought to sell by the lorry load. --Kevin Maidment