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Big Orange Crayon

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Poster Children
DDD
SpinArt Records

The Poster Children have been making music since 1987. I was 6 years old then. How the heck is a band that was making music before I could read effectively be making music that looks to the future even after I've reached the age where I'm deemed responsible enough to vote and buy pornography? They're not human. That's the only reason I can come up with. They have to have super powers of some variety. Here's why:

1.) This album is coming out less than a year after their last album. Plus they put out an album as their electronic alter-ego Salaryman. Plus they went on an international tour. There's no way that they could have done this if they weren't superheroes. I'm thinking along the lines of the Flash.

2.) They have an "electronic alter-ego" for crissakes! Humans don't have electronic alter-egos.

3.) They exhibit no signs of aging. If you see one of their live shows, you'd think that they were still kids excited about getting on stage in front of people because they are so energetic. You get the feeling that the stage is close to either collapsing, melting, or bursting into flames. They put a lot of younger bands that I've seen to shame. Since they don't age, or at least age more slowly than people born on Earth, I think that they originate from a planet with a much longer period for it's orbit.

4.) They have the ability to develop as a band without losing "the Poster Children sound". The same kind of feeling is present on every Posterkids album from Flower Plower on up. This obviously seems like a paradox for finite beings like ourselves. They must, therefore, be pan-dimensional, or at least exist in more dimensions than us.

Even putting their potential superhero status aside, this is a really good album. Most of the reviews I've seen of it go on about how punk it is compared to their last album, New World Record. I guess that's true, in the sense that the songs are generally faster and more raw, but they're too complex to be classified as punk, in my mind anyway. On the level of specific songs, a few really stand out to me even though the whole album is just spiffy: "Zero Stars" is a great song about the life of a touring indie band ("We don't play arenas/we only play in bars/ we don't need to pay someone to plug in our guitars/we're zero stars"), and "Rock and Roll" is probably the most punk rock out of all of the songs, but more importantly is totally witty and charming. And probably comparing "Daisy Changed" to the songs off of Daisy Chain Reaction will give you a pretty good idea of how the Pkids have evolved while staying the same band. If you have ever liked the Poster Children, you will like this album just as much, and if you haven't, judgement day will come for you soon enough.

Total score: 8191 out of 8191