Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
If there’s a single—albeit on the nose—line from Combat’s Stay Golden that reflects the record as a whole it’s when bandleader Holden Wolf spits out “I got sharper claws and leitmotifs / and if you don’t like it, fucking bite me” before blasting off into a blisterting guitar riff on the near-eight-minute epic “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 1.” Indeed, the melodic motif so dramatically presented by the piano in the record’s intro then kicks into ludicrous speed as the guitars and glockenspiels take over in “Stay Golden,” only to come back in ‘80s hair metal form in the reprise of that tune that works as the kickoff to the second half of the record.
The leitmotifs line above is preceded by Wolf promising to reference all his “past endeavors” on the new record, and that idea of looking back seeps through the record beyond the obvious notions surrounding the title (itself a bit of an anachronism at this point). There’s the personal nostalgia of tunes like the loping acoustic rambler “Compound Sentences,” where Wolf reminisces about overly excessive fast food orders and admits “I think about you almost nearly every time it snows,” but there’s also the kind impersonal of hearkening to the past experienced through cultural relics.
“Compound Sentences” also finds Wolf wishing for an accordion just like his heroes so he could “bang out some folk songs like they do on MTV,” while also recognizing he’s “no good at the keys.” (Incidentally, Wolf is 20 years old, so MTV as an entity that played music videos for the majority of its programming was already well on its way to becoming a thing of the past when he was born.) While those heroes may be readily identifiable—Vacation, Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and The Monitor were all name-checked in a recent Stereogum profile—Combat avoids the pitfall of nodding to those heroes in a mimicking way and instead channels the current of those influences to make one of the most exhilarating records of modern punk and emo.
With a record as rich and dense as Stay Golden, there’s an unfortunate urge from a blogger’s standpoint to over-describe. There’s so much here and the record is so consciously and meticulously structured that you almost want to lay out a road map for someone about to listen to it. But at the same time, it’s a record that speaks for itself and will demand your attention the second you hit play, so just a few mile-markers should suffice. The aforementioned title track is a near perfect start, introducing another motif with the lament that “brokenhearted kids don’t party like their parents did in the 90s,” and the self-referential “Faith” doesn’t let the pace drop as Wolf longs to just “be one of the guys / totally stoked and out of my mind” in between “writing stupid hooks in the middle of class.”
It’s “Full Speed Ahead,” though, that really stands out on side one of the record, with it’s hammering repetition of “I’ll be screaming fucking kill me” leading into “cuz the truth is no one feels free.” Probably the most gloomy tune on a superficial level, the energy is nonetheless infectious and the key change feels like a burst of hope breaking through the cloud of doom that hangs over the song. The epic “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 1” and its pair in “Pt. 2” are where Combat really sure what they can do, and it’s hard to imagine anyone listening to these tunes without absorbing the ready-to-fight-god energy Combat exudes on them. Slotted right before “Weird Ending Explained, Pt.2” at the end of the record, “Epic Season Finale” finds Combat at their most radio friendly, with the endearingly catchy refrain of “let’s write a chorus that everyone will scream / let’s come up with another fucking scheme.”
Stay Golden is one of those records that—if you like any shade of punk or emo—you’d kind of have to go out of your way to be a contrarian asshole to hate on. Jagoffs might try to erroneously paint the record as a rehash of its influences (what isn’t to some degree?), but what matters much more is how many future bands will likely be nodding to Stay Golden as the record that made them want to write a couple songs, find a band, book a couple shows, and get their ass in a van, as Wolf puts it on “Faith.”
Stay Golden is out everywhere 8/16 with vinyl available through Counter Intuitive Records.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
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Aaron Eisenreich | @slobboyreject
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