The Districts’ appeal lies in how you can call them a "rock band" and have a typically vague term mean something specific. Or, maybe, they’re a throwback to the last time "rock band" meant something. All four members are under 21 years old and they play bar-friendly rawk with the irreverence and impatience of kids who still have to get drunk in the parking lot, replacing the classic rock and blues with mannish-boy punk vigor. They’re from Lititz, Penn., a town whose closest metro area is Lancaster, but they evoke New York in 2002, which itself evoked New York during a non-specific time in the late-'70s; think "Welcome to New York" with Taylor Swift swapped out for Julian Casablancas and Hamilton Leithauser and Paul Banks, a fantastical guided tour of art-damaged, post-punk, Koch-era NYC minus the clear and present danger. They’re a "the + plural noun" band. For those who felt the "New Rock Revolution" was exactly what its name promised rather than a revival of old aesthetics, the Districts' A Flourish and a Spoil signifies a restoration of order. For everyone else who simply likes rock bands, it's actually kinda quaint.
They're hardly the only ones who fit this description, but the Districts have significant advantages over their contemporaries. For one thing, they leave something to the imagination. It’s rare for the Districts to hit a specific reference point; the chalkdust guitars and laggard tempo of "Chlorine" recall the magisterial mope of early Walkmen, but otherwise, A Flourish and a Spoil is the first half of the past decade in "rock bands," wadded up and spitballed. Rollicking opener "4th & Roebling" in particular establishes itself as the meeting point in a drunken Transatlantic exchange between the loose-lipped pub crawling of the Libertines and Arctic Monkeys and their more tight-jeaned American counterparts. And unlike, say, Drowners or Catfish and the Bottlemen, Rob Grote doesn’t revert to flippant, soft misogyny as the most effective way of conveying "attitude."
Rather, he’s someone just removed from high school and parental supervision, grappling with how to live with one’s self and with another person. Grote’s subject matter is mostly what one might expect from a band of teens in a small town, which is to say, drinking, girls and getting the fuck out of that town. Classicist imagery abounds: in "4th & Roebling", he waits by a train station, wine is drank, used as metaphor and personified; "Suburban Smell" looks towards the high school gridiron as a spiritual void.
In these songs, the Districts’ youthful energy and belief manifests in effort—while the band trudges dutifully behind him, Grote furrows his brow and intently scratches out his thoughts with the intent of giving everyday occurrences some true gravitas. Unfortunately, his logorrhea muddles his perspective, as the transition from feelings to lyrics lessens the impact of his words rather than deepening their resonance. Clichés are jumbled and reconstituted, and in turn sound both banal and strained—"We’d crack mothers’ backs just by walking the street," "There are sixteen homes on every street/ They all of course lie in the neatest rows." It’s a shame that Grote doesn’t trust the impact of observation; "Bold" is one of the few times he lets the situation speak for itself, noting, "My brother’s not home/ He’s learning war in fatigues" as a reflection on the triviality of his worries about the dishes and whether or not he’s capable of loving.
Or, the main issue with the Districts is that they just haven't found a way to channel their energy and ambition into memorable hooks. John Congleton produces and similar to his work on Cloud Nothings’ Here and Nowhere Else, he stays out of the way, capturing a raucous, live-room sound. But whereas Dylan Baldi uses velocity and distortion to counterbalance his facility with songcraft, plodding tempo, wavering melody, and gritted ambience is all the Districts have. The few bits of trickery show a band still unsure of itself in the studio—a wobbly flange effect on Grote’s vocals in "Hounds" and the puttering drum machines on "Bold" emphasize A Flourish and a Spoil's time-stamped experience by touching on Dave Fridmann’s obtrusive production work with the Flaming Lips and Phantom Planet.
All of which makes "Suburban Smell" a purposeful outlier in a number of ways. It’s a brief acoustic number where Grote shows his age; he’s not the road dog or barfly in prior songs, but rather the kid getting stoned in his basement while the rest of his class goes to parties and football games, the sum of which he calls, "the retard dance." It’s easy to call out Grote for lack of sensitivity. But while "Suburban Smell" may stink of piss and vinegar platitude, it’s the rare time when you truly know where Grote’s coming from, where the Districts are a "millennial" band in age and disposition rather than "millennial" in simply sounding like they could’ve scored some MTV2 play at the turn of Y2K.
