Razorcake #142

Home Front interview by Daryl

Home Front has this song called “Quiet World.” The verse steadily marches one foot in front of the other, creating a launch pad for the chorus to jump over a line of school buses while fireworks spray the air. The first couple times I heard it I thought the vocals were, “I’ve been all over the world / for you girl.” My mind created a music video for the song that played in my head. In the video Home Front looked like INXS, and it was a classic ’80s tour video. Footage of them exiting a plane onto the tarmac in Brazil while hundreds of screaming fans greeted them. The fast life of a rock star. I couldn’t be more wrong about the lyrics though! The actual words being said are, “I’ll be alone for a while / quiet world.” This is a classic example of how easy it can be to misinterpret this band. There are surface level qualities you hear right away that might make you think you have it all figured out, but upon multiple listens the world of Home Front comes into focus, displaying a masterfully crafted web of ideas, emotions, and influences. All seasoned with dabs of oi, post-punk, hardcore, space rock, and most certainly ’80s pop!

Sometimes I like to say the ’90s street punk resurgence overshadowed the initial output of the subgenre because every band is better for having heard Minor Threat. The wealth of influences that we have at our disposal from the last fifty years of punk and hardcore can only help but make better music. This directly applies to modern punks making music inspired by ’80s pop: The Soft Kill, Partial Traces, Phantasia, Sweeping Promises, Teini-Pää, and, of course, Home Front! Desperate music for desperate times that does all too good of a job expressing the isolation that’s rampant in our lives.

Hey there big guy, it’s okay to cry!

Amanda MacKaye (Bed Maker, Routineers, Desiderata) Interview by Michael T. Fournier

Washington D.C.’s music scene has been so vibrant for so long that it’s easy to take for granted. But the recent run of new releases on Dischord Records has been as vital and inspirational as ever, with new stuff by old heads like Scream and J. Robbins, as well as bands full of scene vets like Bed Maker. Bed Maker’s rhythm section is made up of Vin Novara (drums) and Arthur Noll (bass), who previously played together in the mathy, underrated act Alarms And Controls, and their guitarist Jeff Barksy has been making quirky music with Insect Factory and Time Is Fire. With singer Amanda MacKaye at the helm, Bed Maker lurches and howls through eleven absolute bangers on their self-titled LP.

I knew some of Amanda’s résumé before we chatted—she started Sammich Records as a high school teenager, releasing albums by Swiz, Soulside, and Shudder To Think, among others. Amanda fronted Desiderata, Jury Rig, and Routineers, as well, and has been a fierce advocate of local music all the while, booking bands at DC’s historic free concert series at Fort Reno Park since 2005. This year’s series featured three-band bills every Monday and Thursday in July.

Her music fandom came across easily during our conversation, when we nerded out about her bandmates’ résumés. We talked about our summers and gardens for a little while, then we got started.

Teenage Sequence Interview by John Miskelly

Granted, if you’re a regular reader of this publication I’m guessing Teenage Sequence might not be your usual fare. Sonically, it’s synth-heavy dance-pop seasoned with a fistful of withering U.K. spoken word dryness. Its LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, disco and post-punk created by a South Asian Londoner with a lot to say about race, the industry, and the general societal and political malaise that seems to be spreading across swathes of the developed world.

Dewan-Dean Soomary has a certain license to comment on the business, coming up as he did with The King Blues, a semi-guerrilla dub-ska folk act that played their way from the volatile London squat scene, through a blossoming U.K. punk underground too often oblivious to its own contradictions, all the way to the corridors of the BBC and the major festival circuit.

Then things unravelled in a depressingly familiar manner. Dewan went by Jamie Jazz back then. He doesn’t anymore. A decade later, Teenage Sequence isn’t just a significant departure from Dewan’s past musical deeds but a re-evaluation of his relationship with his own identity and the people who populate his life. This all makes for a lyrical acerbity that shouldn’t work over such vivacious beats and loops, but somehow does. Anger and wit over great hooks— maybe it has more to do with punk than it might immediately seem.

Mariah Stovall Interview by Kurt Morris

Mariah Stovall’s debut novel, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both, caught my attention because the title is taken from a Jawbreaker song. I also read in some articles that it had to do with the punk, hardcore, and indie scenes of the 2010s. “I’ll have to read that sometime,” I thought. One day, I was at my local library, looking at the new arrivals, and saw it. (I also saw Black Punk Now, an anthology to which Stovall contributed. My library has good taste.) I had difficulty finding anything to read, so I thought I’d check it out. I’m glad I did.

Yes, I Love You So Much… talks about bands many punks know and love, but there’s much more there. The book’s protagonist is Khaki Oliver, and the story jumps between 2022 and Khaki’s time in high school and college in the ’10s. These pages primarily circle around her friendship with Fiona, a peer in high school with little interest in the punk scene. Despite my initial idea that I Love You So Much… was all about indie bands, it ends up being one part of a story about friendship between two teenage girls—a friendship that delves into disordered eating, sexual grooming, and codependency.

If it sounds like heavy stuff, it is. But Stovall sculpts it so it’s never overwhelming or sensationalized. As someone in the mental health field, I found her writing not just engaging but also accurate to my experiences working with people who deal with toxic friendships and eating disorders. Despite the heaviness, she doses her writing with a fair bit of appropriate humor.

I connected with Mariah recently and we discussed mental health, music writing, what makes for a good character, and the difference between being a participant versus an observer as a reader.

Note that there are spoilers of the book throughout the interview and discussions of eating disorders and sexual grooming.

One Punk’s Guide to Vintage Car Restoration by Ric Six

It’s 9:00 on a Tuesday night. I’m in my basement. I’m out of breath; my pulse is well above normal, and the air around me is thick with heat and sweat. I have a three pound hammer in one hand and a chewed up, oily piece of firewood in the other. I release a string of profanity, mostly containing references to The Holy Family, and take another unproductive swing of the hammer into the log, the log into the object of my frustration. Nothing. Not even a slight crack between the two halves of the 1967 Porsche 912 crankcase that sits firmly planted on an engine stand in front of me. What’s brought me to this point? Technically, it’s a need to get to the internal workings of the crankshaft and take measurements on the connecting rod journals. More broadly, it’s a love of vintage German cars, which—despite being a huge and expensive pain in the ass—has brought tremendous joy to my life.

My admiration of cars, specifically older ones, started when I was young. My grandfather and uncle repaired and restored all kinds of vehicles. There was the hearse, the fire truck thing, and a bunch of normal cars in the mix as well. I have fond memories of going to the Pierce Park Car Show in Appleton, Wis. each summer, walking around the colorful sea of vintage Chevys, Packards, Studebakers, and the often bizarre personalities who owned them. While I was in high school, my dad purchased a 1959 Ford Galaxie and my friends would check it out as they walked through our garage and up to the door. This car is referenced in Wesley Willis’s song, “Bob Timmers,” an homage to my now late father, which contains many lines of praise toward him and includes the poetic line, “So far you have an old car.”

“Hawaiians are routinely discriminated and degraded by tourists, who treat the entire island as a theme park resort populated by employees... Truly, no one is free until we are all free.” –Donna Ramone (instagram)

“Free LSD is a hardcore record, but it’s so much more… Free LSD, works as both a sci-fi story and as a metaphor for this neoliberal shitshow we find ourselves in. –Jim Ruland (instagram)

“There is no legal contract or vow in the world that can stop someone from falling in love... We are heart-explorers… How much love is possible if you don’t try to control it?” –Lorde Destroyer

“Democracy depends on picking people who are reasonable, then pressuring them to do the right thing.” –Sean Carswell (instagram)

“Fuck you, spotted lanternfly! I’m hip to your deceptions!” –Rev. Nørb (instagram)

“Another light has dimmed on the once-flickering marquee of Los Angeles’s first wave of punk rock. Johnny Stingray, the founding force behind both L.A.’s the Controllers and KAOS passed away on June 15, 2024.” –Designated Dale

JD Vance is a bearded turd.”Time to flush!” –Art Fuentes. (instagram)

“Rhythm Chili... It tastes illegal.” –Rhythm Chicken (instagram)

And photos from the lovely and talented:

Chris Boarts Larson

Mari Tamura

Albert Licano

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Johnny Stingray