Who cares about the synth and metal vogues-- the real 80s genre we want to see revived is skate-rock, right? Right? Where'd everybody go? Deke? Trey? Oh, yeah, skate-rock never went away. It somehow got inside the malls whose parking lots it used to corrupt after hours. It became emo, or diluted post-Green-Day distortion-pop, or Warped-Tour-core.
Memory lane's a bitch, all grown over with bramble and pocked with billboards. But each of us can coo at recalling the day we broke our right arms in two places when we hit that chain link fence trying to perform a trick on a stolen Guerrero. What could be sweeter than when we passed out in shock a little while later in that hot dog line? Remember how unconsciousness looked like TV static? Dag Nasty was there, soundtracking it all, part of our (now that I think of it, very un-punk) slavish loyalty to Dischord Records in the virginal anarchic days before Tony Hawk performed in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol and Urban Dance Squad lip-synched in a poolful of pro boarders. And skating deserved a music; you've got to love a mode of transportation that incorporates the human appetite for slapstick.
Yeah, Minor Threat were famously tight, but they were like a boiler threatening to blow; Dag Nasty never sounded as borderline unhinged or "hardcore." So the tameness of this one-off reunion (marking the ten-year anniversary since their last reunion on 1992's limp Four on the Floor) comes as no shock. 1987's Wig Out at Denko's exemplified the most powerful chronicle of their self-help speed metal, though the kids swear by Can I Say, probably out of that peculiar punk affinity for firsts. Those folks will be happy to find that the retro-D.C. Minority of One is helmed by Can I Say vocalist Dave Smalley, also of All and Down by Law renown.
This album's fun, though, for what it is: An old-school muscle-flex. As my visiting cousin noted, the guitars go "rernt-ra-rernt" and the drums go "doom-papa-doom-pap." Blood kin ain't lying; Brian Baker, also the guitarist for Bad Religion, can't not sound like himself, though he's allowed to loom larger in the mix and drop more stopwatchably athletic solos on this outing (the occasional Caucasiana of those barbershop backing vocals further suggest the Bad Religion sound), and Colin Shears is kind of bound to that one beat as a result.
Then there's Smalley, sing-speaking about "standing for things," being careful to balance his frustration with positivity as he hurls abstractions at his listeners. I'm surprised that after Built to Spill's spoof of this genre at the end of There's Nothing Wrong with Love, its mouthpieces still pen lines like, "I don't know how to feel inside." Smalley's always well-meaning ("There's got to be more to life than doing what we're told") but Dag Nasty 2002 is trapped in this strange vein of rock that's transparent in its emotions and its didacticism, resulting in art that doesn't draw people closer-- you can garner it just fine through the gallery window. Smalley even delivers some early-day-MacKaye style sermons while the band "hushes." Now and again, "in life" is used to contextualize a line ("everywhere you go there's another wall in life"), which begs the question, where else other than, uh, in life?
I'll admit that this album came in handy after a traffic cop searched me this week, facilitating a brief hate-the-state high that had me hunting for my old hoodie and comparing prices on spray paint. But when I calmed down, I realized that Dag Nasty's simplified approach could only be profound or liberating to someone caught in puberty's sweet torrent back in the day. If anything's changed since then, it's technology, since puberty is now officially installed by corporations, and we walk in the shadow of President Reagantron. Which might be why this aging rage sounds a little canned. The harmless riffage here was so controlled, so palatable, that it inhibited this reviewer's ability to riff on it.
