It’s safe to say that Hold Tight! are deeply embedded in the contemporary US punk rock aesthetic, from trivial markers like the exclamation mark in their name (seriously, those have been a thing for a while now) through the endearingly sloppy qualities of the vocals all the way to the way the band string together their fat, chuggy, distorted melodies and multiple vocal lines (replete, of course, with eternally fun “woahs”).
There’s a certain magical x-factor (not the TV show; as an aside, I despair that one day all short-hand phrases such as this may one day be robbed from us and put to work promoting some cynical, banal and short-lived commodified shit) that makes this style of punk rock really work, at least as far as I’m concerned. Essentially it’s a fusion of music and lyrics that walk a casual line between sweetness, melancholy, passion, driving energy and relentless force, all with enough honesty to resonate in the tough lump of scar tissue that is a punk rocker’s heart.
Lyrical themes, as always, are for the most part a collection of timeworn tropes. Opener ‘ Virginia is Beautiful, Wish You Were Here’ is about standing together to face adversity and being the stronger for it; it’s as good an advertisement as any for the sense of camaraderie that defines the contemporary punk rock scene, at least for those of us who are loud and proud about liking it melodic. Elsewhere there’s ‘Irony is for Fuckers’, which is about fucking up all the time and listening to Lifetime, and ‘Collectibles’ unintentionally lampoons the band’s own material with lines like “here we go again” and “we’re a skipping record, we just need some effort”. But I guess these themes recur time and time again because of their universality, and certainly Hold Tight! turn up some gems like “minor keys bridge the gap for you and me” (‘Wonder’) which is an effective summary of the sense of romance that pervades this style of music.
The band are at their best when they twist the dial 5% over the regular speed (they rarely slouch but faster is better) as in ‘Holy Toledo, This Place Blows’, which isn’t exactly a departure from other songs on the album but manages to be a bit more catchy than most; certainly the dual guitars twiddling away at a simple solo don’t hurt. Elsewhere there’s ‘Our Pets’ Heads Are Falling Off’ (this is the “whimsical title married to the melancholic, despondent lyrics” song) which drives forwards at a relentless pace with an ever-so-faint yet ever-so-effective tonal difference between the two guitars. ‘Can’t Take This Away’ is another strong example of the formula, but it’s with ‘My Guts Have Shit for Brains’ that things change up a little bit, even if it is just thanks to the use of some simple Hold Steady-ish keys and a sometimes slower tempo (the last song, ‘One Foot Down’, is a slow and gentle tune too, but the tradition of the slow/acoustic/sensitive song at the end of the album is so ingrained and widespread it seems barely worth mentioning).
I may have made fun of a few aspects of the album in the preceding paragraphs, but it’s hopefully obvious that I’m able to do so because I’m so intimately familiar with, and so very fond of, this style of music, and it’s with such credentials and biases so clearly established that I’m happy to recommend Can’t Take This Away as a fine example of the form.