Rations "Martyrs and Prisoners" EP on 86'D Records

I was listening to Read Music/Speak Spanish the other day and it never fails to get me. Just when I think it must be dated or their polished emo punk sound can't still effect me the way it did, that album proves me wrong. The lyric sheet folded up in a tiny manilla envelope in between legal-ease paragraphs about a fictional housing development are an indictment of the '90s, predicting the mortgage collapse and the middle east. I'm exagerrating but I still think it's one of my generations greatest protest records, at a time when there aren't many. Also when I think Connor may have gone to places I'm not willing to follow....I hear this record and I'm back on board. What are you selling, I'm buying. I think this single from Rations on 86'd records is really scratching that itch. They're dealing with a lot of similar issues music and lyrically and I'm impressed anyone can pull this sort of thing off these days with intelligence. I talked about these guys a while back with their "How Much Land Does One Man Need?" single. I think it says a lot when I basically come to the same conclusions about these guys without even trying. They have a clear vision and know exactly what they want to do.

"Leaves of Grass" opens on far off am radio guitars, the vocals peeking through the thin fabric and then they blow it right open with high ringing chords in that Desaparecidos sound and energy with was the end of that hardcore emo genre for me. The Promise Ring, Jets to Brazil, it all came to a climax in Desaparecidos and I hear a lot of that scrappy loose playing in these guys. The politics are even there but nailing these shining chords and power riffs are almost the harder thing. Those ringing electric harmonics are the best sound over bashing cymbals and a jittery rhythm crunch. They even drop out to nothing but a thin sounding guitar over stretched wires. The whole record is tied together by weird tones and radio static feedback that runs into "Occasion for War". A tom rhythm drives this massive produced sound that says something even bigger is directly behind this. Complex melodies and bashing conscious punk sounds without ever overdoing it. This would be enough to drag you through one of those days. Even at this slower tempo and synth sounding electric the rolling military snare and big strums are bulldozers. When everyone is slowly jangling away in that huge room sound the drums are in the middle of this arena gluing the pieces together. Looping feedback into" My Magnificent Sea" which reminded me of another band I've almost forgotten, Sunny Day Real Estate. Rations have those crunchy drone hits at half speed and then sprint between verses and you really miss why it's only about 30 seconds long. They refuse to wear out their welcome and they've stuck to the things that made this sound great to begin with and continue to do so.

B-Side's "(No More) Warheads" has severly damaged guitar and vocals in the muddiest broken rehearsal space sound, recorded on a boom box next to the amp. It's a great beginning and they had me going, for a minute I thought it might not rise out of this. The vocals are again where this gets interesting, they've got that screamy invested vocal but coming from the four members they manage a real harmony in the vocal chord shredding. They don't repeat chorus or verses and make sure to put as much detail into the impressive vocals. "The Profiteers" counts down to tom and a lower end electric. That tin can AM radio vocal comes out of the back of the room railing against capitalism and it's never a bad idea to take a look at who's being exploited in anything. There's a reason we can be so wasteful and fat. We're taking away a quality of life from the rest of the people in the world. "Relived/Replayed" is in a fast tempo which is standard for these guys but they manage to keep that speed interesting all the time, doubling things up in a cannon shot fire then back to that 4/4 after the sideways shots. Here they even get into why they personally might be so messed up, you can't just blame all of society. I would absolutely want to see these guys sum up their last 25 years like this - all at once and in haiku form, like gold plated, jewel encrusted rat traps.

Get this on white vinyl, with insert and download card from 86'd Records. They also generously offer this for free at the Free Music Archives under the Creative Commons license. We all want the physical object but they're also making a point of course, the art comes first. I'm also getting nervous that they are making me reexamine vinyl all together. Is it really conscionable to be putting music on discs of plastic when the earth is getting warmer and some people have nothing? I could recycle all year and I don't think it would put a dent in the energy consumed in making a record and putting it on a truck and driving it to my door. Oh man am I fucked. Thanks Rations.

Rations - How much land does a man need? on 86'd Records

Wells, guitarist from Rations and 86'd records sent in his single the other day, which they've put together an impressive sleeve for this release, just like the Netherfriends, Cellar Hits release, it's a stapled mini-zine, 12 pages of collage, photos, quotes and lyrics, and you can guess from the title of this EP that it's not going to be about cruising the beach and smoking weed.
No, these guys have more in common with DBCR and their socially conscious messages.
The title alone got me thinking about what kind of shit is going to hit the fan when society needs to start having that conversation about property rights and how things are going to have to be shared. I know...that goes against the constitution, but eventually, someday we're going to have to get more socialist, if you want to call it that, things will have to lean more towards a collective society rather than this group of individuals. It's inevitable...it's just the people that have all the money and/or land also have a lot of government support and guns.
It can seem a little sad when I try to rationalize sitting around all day listning to music and writing about it. What the hell does that do for anyone? And that's when I have to turn my brain off for a while and let better people handle it like the Rations, which is a pretty loaded word when you get right down to it...no one talks about rationing unless times are getting pretty bad, it also implies some kind of deciding body making strict rules to who gets what and how much...
But let's get to the music, this is a long Island 4 piece who are taking the heavy two guitar route, somewhere between punk and hardcore, but I have to say "A War of All Against All" is the closest thing I've heard on a long time that even comes close to one of the best protest albums about the suburbs....no not the one by Arcade Fire, but Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish. These guys are combining the right mix of post-punk and hardcore with a crazy energy that make this 1 1/2 minute track soar with that same kind of polished rock from that At The Drive In era as well. High distorted melodies against Brian's distanced way-in-the background vocals, actually it's a little sad this one (written in '97) is hard to make out in this mix. That's the point of protest music after all, to get the crowd fired up about the specific BS going on, still a great track and you have to get into this massive zine to dive further into this one.
I'm happy these guys tend to go more melodic on this 5 song EP than screamy-hardcore, these are real songs you can tell the difference between, and get as heavy-pop as possible like Hot Snakes or Sparta.
The B-Side, "No Answer", has these guys making a hell of a racket again, but I think I'm hearing a toy xylophone mixed in here, or the plink of the strings past the fretboard at the top of the guitar...fugazi style. It's weird elements like this that set this apart and make it harder to just lump it into the typical hardcore stuff that I have never been able to crack. Finally the title track, "How Much Land Does One Man Need" is an epic Sunny Day Real Estate sound....this is really bringing all that back...there needs to be another smart band making this sound happen again. I have great memories for that sound, I don't know why it doesn't have more of an audinece these days. Solid rock like this will be coming back around like garage soon.

Get this one from 86'd records, who would never say you're stupid, or make fun of the other records in your collection. They might in the distant future make you share them with the other punks in the collective housing, but that's ok as long as everyone is very very careful with them.

This release was split between 10 labels around the world, literally...Sweeden, Japan, Australia...great idea, and extra punk rock to split the costs...makes sense to me.