The Downtown Struts – Sail the Seas Dry

Chicago has given us many wonderful things, from Tutu and the Pirates to Screeching Weasel, and duck fat fries to deep dish pizza (if you're into that sort of thing...), and now they've given us The Downtown Struts, who have just released an extended version of their first EP, "Sail the Seas Dry" on Pirates Press Records.

The new 10" is seven songs filled with wanderlust, regular lust, and good old-fashioned Punk rock guitars mixed with a tinge of country. Provided, of course, your idea of country is a scruffy guy in Brooklyn in a sideways beat-up trucker hat drinking whiskey, and occasionally getting into fights with the White Stripes just on principle with Johnny Cash on the jukebox in the background.

So maybe "Americana" is a better description than "country", but whatever it is, the album is a strong one, made for long nights on the road, or nights you wish you could be. Every one of the songs comes with a catchy little hook that will lodge its self in your brain and have you drumming your fingers all day. Influences from the Clash and maybe even a little Bob Dylan are evident in the band's melodic and gutsy lyrical style, which paint despair without regret, maintaining punk rock defiance in the face of the misery of the mundane. "Thick as Thieves" is a perfect example, beginning "Packed up a truck/ don't need luck to get me outta here/ we need a record on/ Replacements playing loud/ or a Descendents song." We've all been there at one time or another.

Pirates Press have done an excellent job with the package on this one as well, pressing the album on blue vinyl, and including digital download codes, a free poster, and some of their new "postcard records" along with the album. You can go ahead and buy the album HERE.

 

-Jo Problems-
Big Wheel Staff Reporter
 

 

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