An Edge of Arcady flashback – album originally released April 12th 2006.
Although many bands sauntered about with a sneer or aggressive ambiance in the early 00s, it’s safe to say most would have legged it at the merest whiff of actual fisticuffs. Dustins Bar Mitzvah, under the innocuous guise of four floppy-haired indie-looking types decked out in t-shirts and parkas, bucked the fight-averse trend with plentiful stories about London of members giving lippy onlookers a smack on the nose or two mid-gig.
Rather perfectly, their debut album ‘Get Your Mood On’ took that looming air of threat and backed it up with an exhilarating mix of ballsy takes on politics, religion, and ex-girlfriends, scored by Ramones/Clash brashness, even roping in bone-fide post-punk Television Personalities cult hero Dan Treacy to open the record for them with ‘Artrocker’, reciting a hilariously disparaging gig review, presumably from the now-defunct music publication which shared the same name, that declares the group boasts “songs that dispute the ideas of melody, composition, and rhythm and replace them with garbled yelping.” We’ll presume the reviewer was suffering with some kind of sickness from the night of the gig until the day they put their fingers to the keyboard.
Swiftly discarding the hate behind them, the first song proper just so happens to be one of the most enduring songs of their scene. ‘To the Ramones’ has insistent, sprightly punk guitars, clattering drums, and a hearty melody, as frontman Dave Lazer recalls finding sweet solace in the New York rockers after the soggy end of a relationship.
The unrelenting speed of the tracks and the singer’s cockney yelps could have seen Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah straying into Oi! territory but moments like the halfway point of ‘Saw Right Through You’ where they momentarily sound like Weezer ensure there’s a sight more to them than that. Even the sweary title track, with jeering rabble and little more than three chords, keeps close enough to the side of jovial empathy, using a mockingly gentrified accent to console “your girlfriend’s left, you’ve lost your job, your cats just died and so’s your dog” before descending into its frenetic moshpit of a chorus.
Photo from: https://dustinsbarmitzvah.wordpress.com/
‘Young Pretender’ ensures DBM’s mid-2000s politics are stitched overtly on their sleeves as they absolutely rinse the brilliant piss out of proto-Nigel Farage, right-wing British National Party leader Nick Griffin by mocking his short stature and astutely pointing out “he’s not a proper politician”. ‘Catholic Boys’ is relatable to anyone who was ever preached at by priests or pastors as a kid, cantillating “cos all they teach you in physics ain’t the same as R.E., you really just don’t know what to believe, you know the chaplain scared the shit right out of me”.
The brilliant ‘Goldhawk Road’ takes striding, jabbing guitars, thumping drums and sees the band sticking their head out of the window of their Shepherds Bush flat, noting of their bonkers neighbours that there’s “some who are good, some who are bad, some who are angry, some who are sad, some of them are mates but most of them are mad, it intrigues me”.
Leading us neatly to the raucous splendor of closer ‘Purgatory Girls’, featuring fast riffs, bouncing bass, and Lazer’s vocals morphing into those of Television’s Tom Verlaine as he cautioningly observes “You never know if you’re crossing the line and committing a crime.” And there ends of one of the most underrated albums of the mid-2000s: spitting out angst, politics, and anti-religious disdain whilst not being shy of squaring up for a scrap if you have an undeserving pop at them online (ok, guess I’m maybe the only one that last bit applies to).
Before we go, the version of ‘Get Your Mood On’ on the streaming platforms also includes the ‘Dial M for Mitzvah’ Japanese LP, so it’s worth giving mega quality early singles ‘Lucy’ and ‘Jimmy White’ a spin and all.
‘Get Your Mood On’ was released a whopping 19 years ago, in 2006. If you want to get your hands on it on vinyl, you can buy it over on the band’s online shop, along with the ‘Dial M for Mitzvah’ Japanese release.
Also, whilst you’re in a spendthrift mode, DBM frontman Dave Lazer has a thriving line of t-shirts – Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah and a load of other music and sundry selections, that you can browse and purchase at his site.
But for the time being, you can always listen to the record on Spotify, below:
Edge of Arcady 