"Young hearts be free tonight. Time is on your side." The Constantines are quoting Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" on their own "Young Offenders". I love that Rod Stewart. He hasn't always made the greatest records, but he's always been a fun, friendly spirit, and what a great voice. Plus, he refused to age gracefully.
From puberty on, we strip ourselves of any grace. We can either be subsumed by our awkwardness or we can revel in it, which is what rock and roll is really about-- a perpetual adolescence. What more powerful, sensitive, anguished and alive period of your life to perpetuate? And what more vibrant, muscular, raging-for-life music than rock and roll?
Guelph, Ontario's The Constantines are constant teens, too. And when their music isn't capturing the goofy sweetness teenagers can share when they let their guard down, it captures the drama, anguish, artsy pretension and urgency of youth. They carry the torch for Fugazi with heart and muscle. Bassist Dallas Wehrle's pulsing eighth notes ground dynamic mathematical riffs, with the players dropping in and out to shock the repetitions.
The Constantines climb closer to the Fugazic Throne on the strength of guitarist Steven Lambke's chops, the intelligent poetry of Bry Webb's lyrics, and the boozy rasps of both Webb and Lambke's vocals, which recall Let It Be-era Paul Westerberg. And like The Replacements, The Constantines dominate their movement with their personality, seeming wounded and aged (another teenage-less trick) before their time. "We want the death of rock and roll," Webb announces on the opening track, "Arizona". It's a bleak and blocky number about the 1983 Arizona suicide of Danny Rapp, who wrote "Rock 'n' Roll Is Here to Stay". As the words come out, the music defies the message.
The songs get better, looser, and more varied as the album progresses. "Tonight we milk the stiffs," Webb announces on "Some Party". "Storm the Bastille/ Raid the throne/ Mock the swine who'll rot in heaven/ Swinging on the velvet ropes/ Some punks getting some kicks at some party." Nice lyrics. The Replacements influence shows up again on "No Ecstasy" which swings like the classic "I Will Dare". But it's "Hyacinth Blues" that really makes the bid for greatness. The guitars toll for thee as they stand silhouetted like an exorcist in the mist: "Under Suspicion/ The fool's got the hyacinth..." And here's one of the great pauses of rock and roll, giving meaning and heart to the topic at hand: "...Blues." Then, with anger and passion, they literally spell it out: "O-V-E-R-D-O-S-E."
Another Westerbergian moment, "St. You", serves as the record's acoustic ballad, and no doubt the first of many in a long career. It's the part of the album that says, "All this hard rocking is just something I do for a gas. I'm really a songwriter, and a damn fine one." The also gentle but stronger "Little Instruments" closes the album on a determined note. They may not have the baddest axes, but as they state on the track, they've "got an amplifier."
Indeed, they are amplifiers, as all overgrown teens are. They're emotional burn victims, holed up in their rooms, reading portentous comic books. Maybe they read Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and identify with the isolated, elemental monster. All teenagers are Swamp Things. They long for Alan Moore's other character, John Constantine, to come and tell them what they are, and that they and they alone can halt an apocalypse of the soul. Live forever, Constantines.
