Once upon a time, hardcore rock emerged like a particularly earnest sore on America’s conscience. Bored of the anodyne plasticity of 80’s consumerism, some of the nations youth (mostly male, mostly middle class) formed self-serving rockist cliques, preaching to the converted and ratcheting up the Luddite guitar squall as they went. Self-defeating it may have been, but it carried a real, scratched, political urgency largely lost in these posturing days of post-irony.
Econoline, then, are like a wilted, jaundiced, British facsimile of those early bile spitters, a little like Fugazi stripped of all that made them worth listening to. Protest music has moved on, encompassing more than simply the musical whims of the pasty faced and affluent, and so Econoline find themselves lost in a mire of self-indulged emotional guitar rock, lamenting the trauma of the terminally suburban. It’s catchy, to be sure, and the Husker Du comparisons aren’t entirely uncalled for, but forgive me for drying my eyes and moving on.
4Tom Eyers's Score