Watch Out!, Joe

I was on the fence about trying to tie the events of this past week into this review, and ultimately decided against it. No one is coming to Puke on Your Birthday to learn about social unrest and police brutality. Either you're here because you agree with my views, or you've already clicked away because you don't. This white boy doesn't need to pander any more than he normally does.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the timeless protest language of Watch Out!, and how easily you could apply it to 2020's George Floyd peaceful protests (and even the mostly unrelated riots). Walking around an eerily quiet Center City Philadelphia last Sunday afternoon, it really did feel like "a big storm [was] coming." And so it did, reaching one climax on Monday afternoon, when a bunch of peaceful protesters were trapped under an overpass as police lobbed canister after canister of tear gas into the non-violent crowd. (Fuck, didn't I just say I wasn't going to talk about this here?)

I could see having a few passes at this album without even realizing that this is a protest album. Without knowing that this was a rock band knocking out tunes for the Zimbabwe African People's Union during the Rhodesian Bush War, you'd think that this was just normal rock 'n' roll. When "Love of My Life" claims "I can't stop crying," this would mean petty romance shit in normal circumstances. But when you have a face full of pepper spray, the crying is for a whole different reason. (I know, I know, sorry!)

Again with "The Crowd," the titular crowd is circling around, wanting to "touch you." You would take that to mean that this is a band on stage looking out at their fans, but the situation twists into something deadly when you're looking out into a sea of police, that's the crowd, and they all have duct tape over their badge numbers, and there is no one to hold them accountable for their actions. "They all want to love you"—pretty easy to read that as sardonic these days. (I swear I didn't intentional sit down to write about all this.)

It's possible that I'm overstating it, and that Watch Out!'s value lies in its songs. Maybe the fact that I see so much "protest music" in it is a holdover from a previous time when rock 'n' roll was inherently music that went against the grain. The music itself was the protest ("we listen to it because it pisses our square parents off"). Now popular rock music is more entertainment than a message (see when 1975's Matty Healy attempts to be political and has to delete his Twitter account). But I still hear rock music like this and can easily hear the protesting. It doesn't even have to be explicit.

I'm going off on a tangent... My point is that Watch Out! is already a great little catchy album of rock 'n' roll ditties, and I probably would've liked this album even if its call to stand up for your beliefs was in any way outdated. It is not outdated in the least. You don't even have to have to draw a direct line between Rhodesia's white minority rule and America's white fascist rule. Its message goes beyond that. It's about being on the right side of history.

There's a reason that the final song on the album, "Carrying On," seems almost unfinished in the way it ends. It seems unfinished because it is. There will always be oppression in some form, and thankfully, there will always be a Wells Fargo to help us respond.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5