There comes a point where you know you are getting old, which was hammered home to me recently when it was revealed that apparently “ska has been uncool forever.” I remember the 90s, and forever seems a little bit longer than that. However, when your favourite band of the late 90s has now reformed twice to record albums and is having to juggle recording with family life, there may be some truth to the assertion. Yet, despite age and apparent uncoolness—really, let’s face it, I have never been particularly cool—there are benefits that come from being in the music scene over the long term. So in the vein of our Art and Culture series on the podcast, I bring you an album review that interrogates religion and culture through art.
This interrogation comes as the legendary Denver ska outfit Five Iron Frenzy have come together again during COVID lockdown to record a new album: Until This Shakes Apart. Perhaps a great example of where age and self-reflection bring about new insights. UTSA draws upon two decades of reflection of Christian interaction with America and the saliency of recent events to produce a powerful album that integrates the rebellion of punk and ska with some heartfelt reflections on a Christian-nationalist society.
While this album retains the punch of skank riffs and the sardonic reflection on cultural baggage that Five Iron Frenzy has become well known for, gone is the apparent silliness of songs reflecting on cheeses (Cheeses… (of Nazareth)) and unicorns (“Battle Dancing with Unicorns”). In its place is a harder edged reflection on politics, nationalism, and Christian complicity in the idolisation of the nation over Christ. Although these themes made minor appearances in past albums—who can forget the skewering of the Westboro Baptist Church in “God Hates Flags” or reflecting on the Columbine shooting in “A New Hope”—here it is promoted front and centre. From the first track to the last UTSA is an unapologetically political treatise. But this doesn’t mean that FIF have given up on handling matters of faith, as the problem at hand is that of Christian-nationalism.
Starting with “In Through the Out Door,” titled to comically invoke the attitude of rule breaking that leads to entering through a shop exit, and evoking memories of Led Zepplin’s final album, the band poignantly addresses Christian responses to immigration as refugees coming ‘in through the out door.’ Here they dwell on the construction of a gospel message that locks the doors to the hungry and casts out the stranger, and the lack of grace in churches that espouse such a political approach.
The album continues on to lament a range of topics as broad as rampant gentrification and wealth inequality (“Lonesome for Her Heroes”), the memory of oppression and slavery celebrated in monuments and tyrants (“Tyrannis”), through to the anxiety and nostalgia generated by the inexorable passing of time (“Auld Lanxiety”). However, the theme that repeatedly emerges is the tainted gospel message that comes from the church selling out to society. On tracks such as “While Supplies Last,” Roper cries out about the angst of 2020 America:
Did you waste your prayers protecting snipers
While you hoarded all the Lysol and diapers?
But they perceptively observe that this behaviour has other consequences:
You said “we all deserve this”
For not forcing kids to pray-
While your party loots the earth
And you tell us “Jesus saves”
You’re ignoring half the gospel
Wearing clothing made by slaves
You never “rendered unto Caesar”
There can be no doubt about the complicity of the church in the nationalistic fervour to protect the affluence of the Eagle. On other tracks we hear a call closer to home, for the senseless tragedy of school shootings being ignored in favour of political and economic capital (“Renegades”). The reality of Columbine and family members locked in choir rooms is still raw for the Denver based band some 21 years after the event, let alone the recent shootings in Boulder. [1]
Yet even still the album ends on a hopeful note (“Huerfano”), that the Huerfano, the orphans, those bullied by kids at school, those excluded by society, have a home a place to lay their weary heads. So, the band cries ‘sing on.’
Overall, this album takes the raw energy that Five Iron Frenzy is known for and forefronts the activism of other punk and ska outfits to bring about a merger that insightfully and incisively stabs at the guts of Christian-nationalism, exposing the rotten core within. Until This Shakes Apart draws on many of the themes and approaches that we have discussed on the podcast and brings them into the public consciousness through hard hitting earworms that will leave you reflecting on Christian society and your own complicity in the aims of Christian-nationalism. This album proves that, while ska may be terminally uncool or even dead, Denver’s best Christian ska band still has something astute to say; and the catchy tunes might even make the Christian nationalists sit down, shut up, and listen.
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1NBcD5YIWTEo4Lp4t7xK5V
Listen on iTunes: https://music.apple.com/us/album/until-this-shakes-apart/1546369310
[1] Perhaps ironically the chorus of “Renegades” that is so often ascribed by conservative commentators to ‘the violent left’ is exactly what was seen on January 6th in the Capitol insurrection.
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