If you want to know why Downtown Boys sound so angry on their debut album Full Communism, watch the music video for "Wave of History". In the clip, the Providence-based band outlines the realities of prison overcrowding, the racial divide in U.S. arrest rates, and the number of people killed by police—very real problems that, for many, are remarkably easy to ignore. Our screens offer countless alternatives to anything remotely "unpleasant" or "depressing"; even as militarized police line city streets and 24-hour news networks, they're forced to compete with a bottomless pit of interspecies friendship GIFs.
Victoria Ruiz of Downtown Boys engages with the country's broken systems and the resulting frustration fuels her lyrics. The 28-year-old worked for the Rhode Island Public Defender, aiming to combat racist and classist policing tactics. She currently works with Demand Progress, and she recently wrote an op-ed on Ferguson. Joey L DeFrancesco, 27, was her co-worker at a hotel; they attempted to start a union since the employees were, as he described it, "treated...like garbage." (DeFrancesco later quit that job with magnificent flair.) "Sometimes people ask, 'Don’t you get sad worrying about this stuff all the time?'" Ruiz said. "It upsets me because it is negative and absolves the person of the responsibility of realizing that we all have to think about these things."
Full Communism is an album-length exercise of that responsibility. Downtown Boys have two horns and plenty of aggression in their arsenal and, as they play, they force you to acknowledge the world around you. The title "Break a Few Eggs" pretty well encapsulates the nature of the project. Songs challenge white hegemony, entitled bro culture, and more with churning rock'n'roll lined with Adrienne Berry and Emmett FitzGerald's saxophones. (Between this album and that Pill EP, it's been a good year thus far for the rock sax.) DeFrancesco's guitar, Norlan Olivo's drums, and Dan Schleifer's bass lock in for a fuzzy, chugging barrage. Racism and homophobia are alluded to in shouts but the music isn't cynical; everything seems to be underpinned with the sincere desire that things actually get better. "We make, we made, we will make freedom," Ruiz sings in rapid succession on "Desde Arriba". They've talked about how they encourage a "space of collective power" at their live shows, which makes sense—Full Communism, both in message and mayhem, has the power to whip a roomful of people into a frenzy.
And that's the important bit—this music is saying some real shit, yeah, but it's doing it with a completely unhinged voice. As advocates of human rights, Downtown Boys are well-versed in the history of bland protest songs. "Political music is often cheesy or boring, so no one listens to it," DeFrancesco has said. "As much as we hate on aesthetics by themselves, they obviously matter." Matching substance with style is easier said than done—Downtown Boys could easily fall into punk's trap of loud and fast monotony. They don't, though, keeping things diverse and well-sequenced. Where the horns on "Monstro" lend a soft, beautiful counterbalance to DeFrancesco's jagged guitar, "Traders" is bookended by silence and goes full speed punk at the center.
Full Communism's songs are performed in both English and Spanish—Ruiz said the band approach music "with the intention to speak to as many people as possible." The album's last two tracks are covers—one in each language. There's "Poder Elegir" by Los Prisioneros, a song the Chilean band recorded as an effort to urge people to fight conformity and complacency during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet. The other: Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark". When Ruiz shouts the Boss' world-weariness, she sounds as though she's already started a fire of her own. The covers are effective—the ideal pairing of pop infectiousness and calls to action. Downtown Boys insist that nothing's going to change unless people actually get up and do something, and they've offered a soundtrack that makes positive action feel both attainable and liberating.
