"I feel like I've led a pretty happy life," Big Ups frontman Joe Galarraga lets slip during a few uncharacteristically chipper seconds of "Goes Black". He's not even through with the sentence before he finds a way to bum himself out: "...how come all I can remember is the strife?" What's bugging Joe Galarraga? Well, whaddya got? Compulsive self medication, Gen Y apathy, the wastefulness of disposable razors: no matter the subject, Galarraga's got a few choice words on the topic. Throughout Eighteen Hours of Static, the arty Brooklyn post-punkers' howling debut LP, Galarraga and company put the world on notice. For 28 minutes, no grievance goes unaired, and no blood's left unlet.
Not so long ago, Big Ups were just your garden-variety Descendents-worshippers, proudly unsophisticated and gleefully juvenile. Over several singles and EPs, the music quickly grew fiercer, spinier, and Galarraga started singing like his life—and not just his next beer—depended on it. Veering from harrowing Touch & Go-derived post-hardcore seethers, prickly Fugazi-inspired dub-punk, and the occasional dive into detuned grunge, Static is as serious as a severed nerve. Songs slide from denunciatory Shellac-inflected shouts to jittery Guy-and-Ian grooves in no time at all; the clip is manic, the atmosphere subterranean, but through every turn, Big Ups are in total control.
"With lips and mouths, we can kiss and shout," Galarraga screams a minute into opener "Body Parts", and the excoriations start piling up from there. "TMI" is the anti-technology screed: "find it hard to unplug," he mutters, "so reach for your favorite drug." "Atheist Self-Help" suggests how little time Galarraga's got for organized religion: "No one's gonna save you, so you gotta save yourself/ there's no fire and brimstone in your own personal hell." Whether he's equating landfill-clogging waste with our churn-and-burn culture ("Disposer") or tsk-tsking crust-punks for canine neglect ("Fresh Meat"), Galarraga's uproar is unrelenting. But, though Galarraga's not the type to take things lying down, he never seems to be shouting just to hear himself scream.
The relentless pace of modern life—and the attendant superficiality of quick-fix culture—is a refrain Galarraga returns to throughout Static. On "Grin", he's quick to chastise: "We all think that we know best, but we're struggling just to catch our breaths." On "Goes Black", he all but stammers "sometimes I feel like the pace of my life is too fast, and I think about the time that's passed." Galarraga's heart—to say nothing of his vitriol—seems to be in the right place. But few of the targets of his furor are new subjects for angry young punks, which—given Galarraga's relative lack of nuance—occasionally leaves his "wake up, sheeple" routine feeling a little underdeveloped, less a pointed manifesto than the notebook-margin scrawlings of the newly politicized. The gall is there, and the objects of his ire are clear. But unless you're already predisposed to his way of thinking, Galarraga screaming in your ear's not likely to change your mind.
Still, on-record politics don't always have to be coherent to be compelling. And, as serial complainers go, Galarraga's a hard guy to turn away from. As cranked-to-11, motherfuck-a-downstairs-neighbor music, Static works beautifully, and its lean, propulsive 28 minutes seem to fly by in double-time. Throughout Static, Big Ups come across as a band in complete command of their sound, fronted by a guy on the verge of losing it. If Galarraga can learn to better elucidate the "why?" and "what next?" behind these tantrums of his—to better target his rage without tempering it—Big Ups could really cause some lasting damage. For now, they're doing just fine by punching at the walls.
