Diverse melodies unite cultures

Every time Mischief Brew comes out with a new album, I get hella stoked. In part because they are one of those bands whose albums seem to say exactly what I need to hear at the time in my life when they come out, but also because they are one of the few quote-unquote folk punk bands who haven’t stagnated, who defy expectation with each release.

Folk punk, to me, is either music with punk energy and sentiment played acoustically, and/or punk music that incorporates some of the elements and instrumentation of folk music. I used to be heavy into folk punk, and I do still like some of the bands around the edges of that genre, but I’ve grown tired of Folk Punk as a Thing. Most times when I hear a new (or new-to-me) band, they sound like shitty photocopies of every other folk punk band, and their lyrics are so reliant on the subgenre’s tropes as to be almost parodic. Like, okay, you hate The Man and you can’t hold down a real job, and you like hopping trains and getting stick & poke tattoos, and you drink too much (unless you’re a straightedge folk punk band, in which case you don’t drink at all), and you’re gonna yell about all those things overtop someone banging on a guitar and someone else playing a washboard so loud it’ll make my eardrums bleed. I get it. I too hate The Man! I too am not so good at holding down a real job! Itoo used to hop trains, and I still get stick & poke tattoos and sometimes drink too much! I own, and play, an acoustic guitar…and a washboard! But in the name of Saint Julian the Poor, can’t you find anything else to talk about, or at least a different way to talk about it? Mischief Brew has never had that same-old same-old problem. Even when they’re singing about hating The Man, or hopping trains, or drinking, Erik Petersen is such a good lyricist that he manages to avoid the cliches of the genre. And they have never stuck to just one sound – not even on the same album. Their albums always have me wondering what the next track would bring, and This Is Not For Children is no exception.

“Two Nickels” has a country chug and a punk charge, a heart of diesel with a spark of “oil and kerosene.” “Bad Heart” is straight-up punk, that perfect sort of anthem that makes you feel better about being your alienated, screwed-up self. Crack me if you can, my friend,” Erik sings. Help me find some evidence that I wasn’t just a poor design. It’s a tough good fight to win when you’ve got a bad heart. “Lancaster Avenue Blues” begins with an almost Eastern European rhythm, but then Rebecca Schlappich’s violin joins in, so hauntingly sad, and the rest of the song has a Celtic punk feel. It has that sorrow, that rage, it is a protest song but also a drinking song. And the lyrics tell the heartbreaking story of gentrification and displacement in West Philly. You got your wreckin’ balls and eminent domain, you got your buildings where we work, and used to play, but we knew the night was over when the Univer-City banners came. “City of Black Fridays” is one guitar solo away from being aBruce Springsteen song. I mean that as a good thing. It’s got an optimistic beat, both acoustic and electric guitars, and a harmonica. It’s got the down and out yet resilient characters and is a love song to a down and out yet resilient place – except that it’s about Philadelphia rather than New Jersey. And it’s also about baseball! If you’re singing this song, you can’t lose – even when your home team does. From the Bull back to the wall to the top of city hall, we are beaten, full of crow, but I know I’d never call another home “home.”

(If you’d like to hear Mischief Brew covering a Springsteen tune, you can listen to their cover of “.” It hurts, but it’s a good hurt.) “Squatter Envy” has elements of old school Mischief Brew, that swinging hop, but is also super punk-electric. Your life would be so much better if you just fucked it up. “Danger: Falling Pianos” starts off with a swing tempo and a Django Reinhardt-esque guitar, and then a great electric riff blasts in. It’s an apocalyptic punk swing dance, an anthem for trespassing and going all the places “they” tell you not to go. They say, “don’t get caught down on that side of the tracks.” Gimme danger, disbeware of this and that. “O, Pennsyltucky!” is a ballad, though it’s not without it’s raucous moments. And it almost makes me cry. I have a long history with the great state of ‘Pennsyltucky,’ particularly old Filthadelph, Hostile City, PA (Fun fact: Erik Petersen, and his pre-Mischief Brew band, , were from West Chester, the same suburb of Philadelphia that Ionce lived in). The other reason it almost makes me cry is that we all have places like that – towns and cities that are our homes whether we like it or not. Cities that make us want to sing: I love just to leave you, but it’s good to see you.

“This Is Not For Children,” once again, balances the country-folk influence with blistering punk rock (That gang-vocal “lie lie lie” section in the middle could’ve come straight out of a Bad Religion tune). “No Candlesticks” proves, perhaps better than any other track on the album, that Mischief Brew doesn’t lean too hard on either the folk thing or the punk thing, but rather take the best elements of both and make them their own. It has a hint of Eastern European folk music, plus a bit of a carnival feel. It is also amplified, with a pinch of distortion, and punk rock sing-along woah-oh-ohs. And it includes a musical interlude with a bass line and guitar riff that remind me of something that could have been on the World/Inferno Friendship Society’s Just the Best Party, which gets to me in a way I couldn’t explain without writing an entire separate article about it. Lyrically, well – I hate to keep using the word anthemic, but… I once said that all the best songs are either anthems,ballads, or both, and “No Candlesticks” is one hell of an anthem. Throw it down and bottoms up. Join in our ode of reckless lunacy. Double wick, no candlesticks until we burn, and that’s a way to be. Going by my subjective statement about what songs make the best songs, “Slow Death Hymn” is both. It is a ballad for the ones we’ve lost, and an anthem for those who are still with us. And it makes me cry.

Last week (upon time of writing), I found out that an old zine friend and former penpal of mine took his own life earlier this month. I hadn’t spoken to him in many years, but I always held him, and his words, in my heart. When I’m getting ready to write an album review, I listen to the album over and over, and often find myself listening to particular tracks more than others. When getting ready to write this review, with that old friend ghosting my mind, I listened to “Slow Death Hymn” twice for every one time I listened to the other tracks. Tonight, this one’s for him, and all the others that the world lost too soon. So tattoo our arms and raise our glasses, call out your names this New Year’s Eve. And may the next time we kneel at a casket, we say, “At least the story’s complete.” For those who are still here – if it’s a highway, I want you there at the side, still awake and still alive. And I want Mischief Brew playing the soundtrack, forever and ever, amen.

is a writer and zine-maker currently based in southeastern Wisconsin. She writes about nostalgia, desire, identity, music, wild girls, and her misspent youth