The well-worn phrase tells us that good things come to those who wait. Broadly speaking, and in musical terms, that’s bullshit. But, when you’re talking the Lawrence Arms and ‘Metropole’, their first full-length in almost a decade, it’s a different story altogether.
In the eight years since ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ marked a creative highpoint for the band, even when compared to the fan favourite ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, the Lawrence Arms have been dormant, but their members have been busy breathing life into solo endeavours and, in the case of Brendan Kelly, becoming one of Twitter’s leading purveyors of dick jokes and social commentary.
Chris McCaughan relocated from Chicago to Portland and put out three excellent Sundowner records, while Kelly released a fine album with the Wandering Birds and joined Neil Hennessy in the Falcon. Hennessy also worked with Treasure Fleet and can now often be found running through pristine pop songs as the drummer of Smoking Popes.
The genesis of ‘Metropole’, then, was not a forced arrangement. According to Kelly it was a fairly organic process, and it shows. Free from any label pressure or lingering commitments - if not expectation - they have crafted a Lawrence Arms record that carries the hallmarks of the best Lawrence Arms records.
It’s about growing older and retreating to the sidelines as the city continues to buzz, beginning and ending with the same prophetic line: “I was born and I died, and just a moment went by.” For the band’s admirers, it’s also a release very much of its time. In the last few years, many of the people who once pored over their lyric sheets have tipped over into their 30s, landing face first in families, mortgages and Coldplay fans asking why they haven’t grown out of punk rock yet.
Both Kelly and McCaughan treat the subject with the same wry, misanthropic wit that’s served them well in the past, alternating between heartfelt sentiments and provocative imagery. Vocally, both are on sterling form, the extra weathering on their voices informed by their recent solo work. The title track is cut from the same cloth as much of Sundowner’s output, while The YMCA Down The Street From The Clinic calls on the seedy croon employed by Kelly on ‘I’d Rather Die Than Live Forever’.
‘Metropole’ is less forthright than ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ but retains that album’s ability to wring melody from unexpected places. It’s a neat companion piece to ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ as well, but, in keeping with its circular nature, it takes cues from throughout the band’s history.
On Seventeener (17th and 37th), the nine or 10 beers that Kelly was going to drink in An Evening Of Extraordinary Circumstance have become 17, and rather than getting on a train into town, he’s watching the lights from a distance. “Dying young just didn’t work out, so I guess I’m dying old,” he laments in its chorus.
Acheron River, Drunk Tweets, Hickey Avenue and the outstanding Beautiful Things achieve the same balance of hooks and lyrical introspection, and the layers of self-reference, pop culture bits and sharp observations knit together into a richly satisfying whole. Eight years was a long time to wait, but it was worth it.
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