So earlier this ear, the mysterious beach punks known as The All Brights put out their second EP on Red Scare Industries. It’s called The White Album EP and it totally ruled, but we got kinda side-tracked with all of the iced coffee chugging and great white dodging that we are standard operating procedure during Massachusetts summers, so we kinda spaced reviewing the album. But then the leaves changed color and Halloween came and went and we started to get the seasonal affective-related doldrums that pop up when it starts getting dark at like 3:30 in the afternoon. So we plugged in our light boxes and fired up The White Album EP and now it’s like July all over again!
The EP contains six epically radical tracks that tackle most of society’s present ailments head-on, pulling few-if-any punches in the process. Kicking things off is “Maximum Hangtime,” a sub-two-minute rager about always making sure you save time to put your bros before your woes (editor’s note: I paraphrased and/or flat-out stole parts of that line from the album press release, but it’s goddamn perfect). “One Last Blue Text” follows, and finds our narrators telling a soul-crushingly real tale of a once-requited love that’s started to trend in a southerly direction, a victim of some of the complexities that plague us in 21st century America, specifically when one realizes that the object of their affection has switched from an iPhone to an Android device. The struggle, as we all know, is real. “Midwest Fuck Me” closes out the proverbial first side, and finds our protagonists again struggling macro issues, specifically with the state of higher education in the US. The song plays like a modern-day retelling of 1960’s classic “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah,” only our narrator isn’t lamenting being away at summer camp, he’s instead lamenting a decision to move to Ohio for college, a thousand miles away from the surf and avocados and reggae music in his native California.
“Side Two” gets things started with “The Ballad Of Me And My Funds,” is a rousing, working-class anthem for the children of the top one-percent-of-the-one-percent crowd, sure to be blasting from the speakers of your all of the Blohm + Voss’s in your neighborhood for decades to come. “Stand Up Pat L. Board” follows, and is a feel-good story about a young Arizonan who overcomes adversity and tackles the bullies in his new-found home town. This track, sung by the band’s inspirational bass player, who’s somewhat coincidentally also named Pat L. Board, will undoubtedly do for paddleboarding what Daniel LaRusso and Karate Kid did for the martial arts in the 1980s and what Mitchell Goosen and Airborne did for Rollerblading in the 1990s. Finally, The White Album EP closes out with “I’m Buying A Boat,” a heart-warming, ukulele-and-steel-drum driven ode to trading in your ladyfriend for a younger, hotter version, only WAIT, SHYAMALAN TWIST COMING, your ladyfriend reveals that she’s been nailing your best friend all along AND he’s got a bigger schmenzer than you. We’re pretty sure that’s the plot of Under The Tuscan Sun, right?
Anyway, if you’re still feeling the post-FEST blues or need a little pick-me-up while you’re digging the shovels out of the toolshed and tuning up the snowblower, fire up The White Album EP to cure what ails ya!
4.5/5 Stars