The scene is Downers Grove, Illinois, 1995. In the musty, cigarette-reeking studio of WDGC, projecting literally dozens of watts into the west suburban Chicago sky, a young boy palm-sweatingly broadcasts a phone interview with his favorite band to three or four listeners. Struck with a speech impediment from talking to rock stars, the boy stammers out an Interview 101 question on how their latest album is selling. "We just sold our 200th copy," quips the bassist, "meaning our certification has been upgraded from cardboard to styrofoam."
The heavy-sweater was, of course, me; the band on the phone was, of course, the Poster Children. As teenagers who care about such things tend to do, I had made the Posterkids my pet band, the group just obscure enough that I could appear one step ahead of my peers, accruing precious "you mean you've never heard...!" points with their anime-inspired album covers. Not only were they my first interview (and close to my last-- I never did get very good at it), but the first time I moshed/crowd-surfed was at one of their shows (after being dropped off at the Wrigleyville Dog by my parents), and their RTFM album was the subject of my very first published record review.
This trip down memory lane isn't entirely self-indulgent, as the Poster Children themselves seem infected by the nostalgia bug on No More Songs About Sleep and Fire, their first album in four years. After a 16-year career which peaked commercially halfway through with a video on 120 Minutes and a doomed record deal with Sire, the Champaign quartet is in joyous regression, hearkening back to their Steve Albini-produced punk debut, Flower Plower. It's hard not to call it a midlife crisis, with a new tight-bodied drummer standing in for a new tight-bodied girlfriend.
But lest my comparison has you imagining the musical equivalent of the bald guy in a Porsche, let me quickly state that the Posterkids sound positively ageless through No More Songs about Sleep and Fire, not having missed a flailing beat through the intervening years of decreasing tempos. Temperance anthems "Kate" and "The Bottle" cruise through high-RPM states like a teenage straight-edge band, though the message packs more punch from musicians old enough to buy alcohol. Political rage is manifested well in the brutally indignant riff of "The Leader", even if the megaphoned lyrics bring to mind the episode where the Simpsons join a cult more than a sports- and sex-obsessed State of the Union Address.
Themes of nostalgia and backwards time-travel coalesce with "Western Springs", appearing in the traditional Poster Children second-track single position. Fond reminiscence of suburban homes, chemical green lawns and full refrigerators, the song highlights the chain-link interplay of brother guitarists Jim and Rick Valentin with bassist Rose Marshack, the group's vocation as computer programmers in Champaign's Silicon Cornfield leading to jittery rock made up of tiny complementary parts. Highlight reel: Fretslide sirens ricochet around chanted vocals through "Flag", R. Valentin works his David Byrne impression on museum-punk "Sugarfriend", the group revisits their too-caffeinated-to-properly-shoegaze past with "Shy".
That the Poster Children have abandoned their tech-forward leanings (they were also the first band I saw sport a laptop on stage) to their ambient side project Salaryman is only half a shame; their binary skills were always better suited to CD extras anyhow, like the album-length commentary track that graces No More Songs. And despite a slump in the middle of the album, overall it maintains surprisingly high quality, proving again that the Posterkids are subject to a shallower slope of diminishing returns than other bands of their era. By looking back to their giddy-punk roots, the Poster Children swig from Cortez's water fountain, and in the meantime manage to throw this indie-jaded reviewer back to the good parts of being 15 again.
