The Brooklyn-based Aye Nako have built their reputation by purposefully keeping to D.I.Y. circles that specifically promote their own community-oriented, anti-capitalist, LGBTQ-friendly ideology. Bassist Joe McCann, vocalist/guitarist Mars Ganito, guitarist Jade Payne, and drummer Angie Boylan have stressed repeatedly that their politics are essential to their standing as queer, multi-racial, multi-gendered musicians. Yet the pop punk style they've perfected over the past few years has, historically, run contrary to that identity. Especially as the genre was enjoying its peak commercial successes in the early 2000s, pop punk's social conservatism helped market an innocuous breed of suburban, digestible rebellion to as wide an American population as possible.
Aye Nako, a band that is anything but macho, say they've attempted to distance themselves from that world, but their self-released, full-length debut Unleash Yourself maintains those ties. Its riffs and melodies barely diverge from traditional pop punk; the sugar rush arrives with an archetypal, Blink-182-like sweep within the first 10 seconds of opener "Start Talking", and gives way only selectively throughout the record's 35-minute cartwheel. Considering that the grittier, more hardcore-influenced tracks from the band's 2010 demo didn't make the LP cut, it seems that Aye Nako's aesthetic has indulged more deeply into its pop punk tendencies than ever.
Fortunately, Aye Nako's greatest strength is their ability to bend the once-rigid constraints of pop punk style to better reflect their unique experiences. They inject new life into the genre by redefining it as the outsider space it was intended as in the first place, using it to explore subjects like love that's complicated by questions of gender identity and sexuality. Still, that juxtaposition of wisdom and childishness sometimes gets the better of them: "Cut it Off"'s deep-digging lyrics, "Break your own legs/ What this condition may reveal/ Is how you only take a sip when it’s watered down" fit awkwardly and indistinctly among Ganito and Payne's stricter, more decisive chord progressions. But as all four Nakos erupt like Lost Boys into puppyish yowls at the end of the fittingly titled "Howl", you can't help but be thankful for that precarious young-old balance, whether or not it always comes off.
As for whether Unleash Yourself will hit home with the audience Aye Nako hopes to reach, that depends on what its members choose to do with it. The band has said in interviews that that its raison d'etre is to make the music they didn't have as queer teenagers, to provide empowerment for younger generations. Unleash Yourself succeeds on that level. But like many albums whose makers staunchly maintain D.I.Y. values, often to the point of self-exile, Aye Nako's debut runs the risk of flying under the radars of less-plugged-in kids who could benefit from their empowering messages. Whether or not Unleash Yourself finds its way into the hands of those teenagers, though, its universally charming launch pad resurrects a strained and tired world as something new, urgent, and far more substantive.
