In any other year, a Poster Children covers EP would ring with the veteran combo's trademark electric guitar slash, be filled with hysterical hiccups from frontman Rick Valentin, and get its guidance and cool from bassist Rose Marshack. But this isn't any other year. It's an election year-- one that this band, and many others, seem to feel holds more importance than previous ones. In 2004, between Dean screams and Bush smirks, we've endured a steady stream of musical commentary. From Fat Wreck's Rock Against Bush comps, the stewing polemics of Steve Earle's The Revolution Starts... Now, and the star-ridden lineups of MoveOn's Vote for Change tour, the musical tub-thumping has been widespread and varied.
Now Poster Children have thrown their hat into the protest music ring with a tidy explosive device called On the Offensive. And, rather than penning six original anti-Bush screeds, the band offers six covers, ensuring that the EP won't become instantly dated. So, upfront, Offensive scores points for blending the Poster Kids' activist streak with cred factor-- because no matter who wins in November, the band's faithful and raucous cover of The Clash's "Clampdown" will remain totally righteous.
On the Offensive dusts off a few other diatribes from the previous conservative era, as well. The burbling plastastic synthesizers of Heaven 17's 1981 single "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" are replaced by a whiny chaos of both keyboards and guitars, and Valentin channeling H17 vocalist Glenn Gregory's dramatic phrasing. X's "New World" is also reborn, but with Valentin and Marshack's eerily perfect regeneration of the John Doe/Exene Cervenka harmony dynamic. With the volume down you might think your stereo slipped back to 1983. Wait: economic depression, a paranoid populace, fearmongering leaders. Maybe it did!
The Kids also tear into "Divide and Conquer" by Hüsker Dü, a band whose name has been dropped in the more overzealous reviews of Green Day's ambitious but ultimately just lengthy and loud American Idiot. The greatest thing about On the Offensive is that it's never as idealistically raucous as something like Idiot: It's a banged-out covers record, not an attempt at a sweeping statement. And it wisely lets pure rock power do the preaching. On "Divide", The Poster Children seem more concerned with getting the lead guitar's trebly urgency right than hammering home the statement. As they do on the rest of On the Offensive (including the readings of Fear and XTC that fill out the set), they want their versions to stand up sonically, to be counted long after the 2004 presidential election. The band understands that the EP's embedded message to vote and be heard-- oh, and that Bush really sucks-- doesn't need incessant harping. It's there in the distortion of all these songs, and the throwback sound of the era they represent.
