The Clash, Britain’s rather famously political punk foursome, memorably sang, on 1979’s landmark London Calling, of being “Lost In The Supermarket.” Released on that sprawling double album less than one year after Britain took a shockingly conservative turn with the ascension of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the track was an arresting ode to suburban ennui.
The Brooklyn punk rockers The So So Glos do for New York City in these troubled ’00s—deep into second terms for Bush and Bloomberg—what the Clash did for London in ’79: burn it in political effigy with rambunctious meta-protest music. But I suspect that they might get equally lost in the corner bodega (though surely they would eventually find the beer aisle).
In fact, when I ask the band about their name as they stand smoking cigarettes on a Greenpoint sidewalk before a gig, they explain that those same stifling supermarkets and bodegas contain reflective windows, and mirrors give us endless chances to be conceited. “To see how your pants look as you’re passing by,” explains Ryan Levine, one of two guitarists in the four-piece. “Everybody does it. We all think we’re the shit.” It’s clear he’s using an all-inclusive “we,” speaking not just for his bandmates but also for his species. “But we’re really [all] just so-so,” Ryan says.
Not even an hour later, bellowing out gloriously raw-throated punk, lead vocalist/bassist Alex Levine is singing about “skinny jeans on icicle thighs” during the breakdown on “We Got The Days,” and the Glos seem, with each hammered drum skin and furious chord, to be simultaneously acknowledging, conceding, apologizing and shrugging off the attitudes of fashion they were openly discussing earlier.
On stage, they’ve stripped off the smart, asymmetrical black leather jackets they were sporting on the street, but The Glos’ punk-battered energy rips through in every energetic, relatively untrained and howlingly harmonized shout. The listeners stuck in the back of the small crowd, likely unable to really see the Glos as they pivot and thrash on the floor—mere inches from the audience front row of the audience—could take away all they need to know from listening alone. Though they mock their own personal form of practiced vanity, it’s a sonic (not sartorial) style that ultimately defines them.
The Glos sound unquestionably like The Clash, updated not so much technologically or politically as spiritually—though punk’s spirituality has simply become more ragged in the last two decades. “Lost In The Supermarket” made an intelligent statement about late-20th-century consumerism, but 25 years on, The So So Glos’ brand of punk rightfully and often joyfully doubts both itself and its trappings—it offers what little inspiration for change they feel is possible.
You can hear the acidic spit fly at the end of “We Got The Days,” Alex repeating a comic-yet-poignant concession regarding punk’s practices and politics: “Stick the revolution to the bathroom stall!” he wails. The energy with which they loudly and self-consciously contemplate punk ideas of protest renders the whole enterprise powerfully paradoxical.
One wouldn't be surprised to learn, however, that the typical Glos show attendee was a bit more hopeful or optimistic: “We don't usually play bars,” Alex says, the unfortunate nature of this Greenpoint gig not being all-ages so glaringly apparent that he need not acknowledge it explicitly to make it known.
Putting such social considerations aside, punk rock, on a purely musical level, also had its standard for aural variety set by The Clash with the palette-expanding London Calling; and The Glos, on their late-’07 self-titled and self-released full-length debut, follow suit. “Seventeen” reduces itself to just piano and vocals midway through, “Irish Rose” is a successful slab of hay-bale twang and the 14-track album’s closer, “Mold Baby (& The Queen Midas),” is built around a circular uke strum.
On that final track, the young band of mostly brothers (Alex, Ryan and their stepbrother/drummer Zach Staggers were all raised together in Bay Ridge; guitarist Matt Elkin is the young group’s odd-one-out non-relative) sing plaintively: “It’s a So So City,” they say, an admittedly odd way to rechristen New York in their own image; but, in tandem, it puts a five boroughs increasingly gripped by urban ennui in proper, Gloing light.
The So So Glos may be a rightfully self-conscious and anxiously doubtful lot; but I, for one, hope that as more people hear them—and many more should—that our generation is moved to do more than just stick its revolution to the bathroom stall.
The Brooklyn punk rockers The So So Glos do for New York City in these troubled ’00s—deep into second terms for Bush and Bloomberg—what the Clash did for London in ’79: burn it in political effigy with rambunctious meta-protest music. But I suspect that they might get equally lost in the corner bodega (though surely they would eventually find the beer aisle).
In fact, when I ask the band about their name as they stand smoking cigarettes on a Greenpoint sidewalk before a gig, they explain that those same stifling supermarkets and bodegas contain reflective windows, and mirrors give us endless chances to be conceited. “To see how your pants look as you’re passing by,” explains Ryan Levine, one of two guitarists in the four-piece. “Everybody does it. We all think we’re the shit.” It’s clear he’s using an all-inclusive “we,” speaking not just for his bandmates but also for his species. “But we’re really [all] just so-so,” Ryan says.
Not even an hour later, bellowing out gloriously raw-throated punk, lead vocalist/bassist Alex Levine is singing about “skinny jeans on icicle thighs” during the breakdown on “We Got The Days,” and the Glos seem, with each hammered drum skin and furious chord, to be simultaneously acknowledging, conceding, apologizing and shrugging off the attitudes of fashion they were openly discussing earlier.
On stage, they’ve stripped off the smart, asymmetrical black leather jackets they were sporting on the street, but The Glos’ punk-battered energy rips through in every energetic, relatively untrained and howlingly harmonized shout. The listeners stuck in the back of the small crowd, likely unable to really see the Glos as they pivot and thrash on the floor—mere inches from the audience front row of the audience—could take away all they need to know from listening alone. Though they mock their own personal form of practiced vanity, it’s a sonic (not sartorial) style that ultimately defines them.
The Glos sound unquestionably like The Clash, updated not so much technologically or politically as spiritually—though punk’s spirituality has simply become more ragged in the last two decades. “Lost In The Supermarket” made an intelligent statement about late-20th-century consumerism, but 25 years on, The So So Glos’ brand of punk rightfully and often joyfully doubts both itself and its trappings—it offers what little inspiration for change they feel is possible.
You can hear the acidic spit fly at the end of “We Got The Days,” Alex repeating a comic-yet-poignant concession regarding punk’s practices and politics: “Stick the revolution to the bathroom stall!” he wails. The energy with which they loudly and self-consciously contemplate punk ideas of protest renders the whole enterprise powerfully paradoxical.
One wouldn't be surprised to learn, however, that the typical Glos show attendee was a bit more hopeful or optimistic: “We don't usually play bars,” Alex says, the unfortunate nature of this Greenpoint gig not being all-ages so glaringly apparent that he need not acknowledge it explicitly to make it known.
Putting such social considerations aside, punk rock, on a purely musical level, also had its standard for aural variety set by The Clash with the palette-expanding London Calling; and The Glos, on their late-’07 self-titled and self-released full-length debut, follow suit. “Seventeen” reduces itself to just piano and vocals midway through, “Irish Rose” is a successful slab of hay-bale twang and the 14-track album’s closer, “Mold Baby (& The Queen Midas),” is built around a circular uke strum.
On that final track, the young band of mostly brothers (Alex, Ryan and their stepbrother/drummer Zach Staggers were all raised together in Bay Ridge; guitarist Matt Elkin is the young group’s odd-one-out non-relative) sing plaintively: “It’s a So So City,” they say, an admittedly odd way to rechristen New York in their own image; but, in tandem, it puts a five boroughs increasingly gripped by urban ennui in proper, Gloing light.
The So So Glos may be a rightfully self-conscious and anxiously doubtful lot; but I, for one, hope that as more people hear them—and many more should—that our generation is moved to do more than just stick its revolution to the bathroom stall.
