Friday March 29th 2024

The Grubs – “Dirty Love”

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The Grubs – “Dirty Love”

 

Definition: Grub- The larva of an insect, especially a Beatle (John, Paul, Ringo or George).

Definition: Food- “A popular bar serving excellent grub and larva from insects.”

Definition: A dig or poke, superficially, at the earth- “The damage done by the buggering badgers grubbing for worms destroyed my appetite for larva from insects.”

Definition: Rummage- “I began grubbing about in the disposal unit trying to find some larva to eat.”

Why this band, called The Grubs. Would align themselves with a term that seems so vile and disgusting- ripe with innuendos of eating insect larva and worrying about where homosexual badgers are dining is beyond me?

I mean, we have enough to worry about in a world where the immigrants are stealing our CEO jobs and smuggling them on boats to China. Where homosexual badgers are free to marry while heterosexual weasels are badgered by those weaseling out of their commitments to mental hospitals.

Which, gladly, leads us in turn to the band The Grubs.

According to the band they are from Haverhill, play rock’n’roll and have been around since 1830.

Much of that is erroneous but on their bandcamp they claim to play “punk rock’n’roll classic punk garage,” and maybe throw in there pop/punk and skate/punk and I’ll be satisfied.

But if you can find it in your heart to disregard their unsavory choice of namesake, you may find a band that chooses fun over pomposity, creativity over the norm, rawness and realness over the crap and bullshit and Taco Bell over Burger King.

( Please put the headphones, now, on your head, and press play).

“Wrong Kind” allows the bassist to lead the charge but once the drums and guitars come in we’re jettisoned to overdrive along with a snarling, flippant vocal recalling an English punk band from ’77. This song smacks you right between the eyes till you’re seeing stars and your ears are pleading for more abuse. The drums chop ruthlessly, like a lumberjack on crack, the vocals send out a hook but one laden with grit and integrity. “Another bad decision in the small, old part of town…too fucked to explain.”

A dangling on the tightrope, echo-y guitar solo swoops in while the bass drops out giving me visions of The Cramps and sugarplums in my head. “I don’t know right from wrong anymore and I don’t even fuckin’ care.” I don’t know left from right, up from down, my ass from my asshole but I do know- this is one fuckin’ great song.

With a crescendo starting the song, sounding much like the ending of “A Day In The Life” by The Beatles (larva), “Grubs Up My Ass” starts with two chords being wielded like two sharp ganzo knives being handled by a sushi chef. Soon the drums come in to pound a path for the low, growling vocals also blasting in. All while the skate punk energy and comical words causes a great punk band, like the Angry Samoans, to spring to mind.

But then the sushi chef is cutting up larva and slicing up my ass and then stuffing grubs into said ass! And now I’ve got a great, fun punk song running back and forth between my ears inside my head as well!

“Daddy Issues” starts with some chugging guitar tossing chards of debris into the air while some drum accents are tossed in. There’s the hint of The Cramps going 100 miles per hour in this tune. “Daddy issues and then I die,” delivered with a rock-a-billy lurch as the static, great guitar solo brings it to a resolving end. This is the blur of energy and passion creating a great song.

As a change of pace what’s next is a poignant, sensitive song reminiscent of such great 70’s artists as Gordon Lightfoot and Cat Stevens. “Everybody Hates Me (Shut Up)”- “You said that you love me/ said you’ll always be there…I said I just don’t care/ Now you hate me/ Everybody hates me/ Now you hate me/ Shut up.” Now that the animal tranquilizer that I snorted before writing this paragraph has worn off I see this song more as a pop/punk ditty with a hardcore edge, something like those marauding, malcontent Mongolians- The Pity Whores might invent. “You say I need a haircut, I’ll just drink some beer.”  Kind of my universal answer to everything. Shouldn’t the presidential debates be some kind of beer pong game were they all get shit-faced before they start the actual debate?

There’s a guitar solo in here by a girly and everyone who’s smart knows girls are the best and it’s great, seemingly ripped from an old Buzzcocks record. But then this whole album seems like the best of all early bands mixed with the best of later bands to create one energetic original whole.

The Grubs are from Haverhill the same town that Chanticlear is from. The later produced one of the best albums I’ve reviewed this year. And this is an album that can proudly hang with that one as it mines the same styles of pop/punk, garage rock’n’roll. And this is certainly an album full of fun, one of the most fun albums of the year by far.

What’s best about The Grubs though is their spirit. In the vocals and guitar licks that epitomize bands like The Cramps, The Buzzcocks. In their lyrics and speed that conjure up The Dead Kennedys, The Angry Samoans. There’s lot of great stuff in their including every good punk band from the nineties.

But what’s more important than what their influences are, is what their hearts and guts and souls are relating. What’s “in there”, I think, matters and it matters a lot to me- seeing all this passion, energy, humor and fun exploding.

Like a pinata filled with these wonderful surprises, these songs full of passion and fun.

HIT IT!

(Slimedog)

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