Having proved themselves masters of the quick, vicious smash and bash, on their second full-length album
the Kennedys
continued in that vein while finding other effective ways to express their all-encompassing message of resistance and satire. Absolutely nobody is safe, whether it's the more expected targets of conservative society, or those who claim to follow what
and punk promised but only ended up acting like idiots. For the most part, though, it's a well-deserved smackdown of all the jerks the early '80s produced, set to some fantastic music. Bookended by random noise jams -- the first one with a wonderfully dismissive spoken-word analysis on societal programming for The Good Life --
Plastic Surgery Disasters
shows
East Bay Ray
,
Klaus Fluoride
and
D.H. Peligro
turning into an even more awesome unit than before.
Ray
's sheet-metal intense guitar may once or twice get slammed into too much treble for its own good, but his spaghetti-western-cranked-to-ten playing is fantastic stuff at its best. The others have their moments, like
Peligro
's rolling drum breaks on
"Trust Your Mechanic."
When the band aims for subtlety, the results are grand -- the sudden silences on
"Trust Your Mechanic,"
the goofy hipswing start to
"Forest Fire."
Unsurprisingly,
Biafra
is still at the center of it all; once again, the song titles make it clear what's at play.
"Terminal Preppie,"
rips into an example of the type with gusto, and the wonderfully sneering
"Winnebago Warrior"
is just the tip of the iceberg. The real highlight can be found at the end --
"Moon Over Marin,"
with a soaring, anthemic surf-rock line from
offsetting
's semi-apocalyptic vision of the Bay Area's snooty region. ~ Ned Raggett