It is good practice at the close of a year to look at the trendy music blogs “best of” lists. It might go against your haughty tendencies as a music fan to search fashionable websites for albums from a year ago, but at some point, no matter how much fun hating on Gorilla vs. Bear can be, these end of the year lists are helpful in finding new music (or at least music that is new to you). Comparing blogs to search engines, think of the editors annual picks as a way of filtering your search results in order to yield the most desirable entries. Concurrently, if you are willing to forego the claim of discovering a band, reviewing a hipster “best of” list gives you smug free insight into what college radio thinks is cool. At any rate, around this time every year, when being outside anytime between 12-4 is ill-advised due to the star at the center of the solar system, I will discover an album that temporarily changes my music listening habits. That is to say that I will spend a solid week and a half listening to an LP that dropped six to twelve months prior. This year my summer infatuation is The Growlers Are You In Or Are You Out?

The title of the record suggests that The Growlers do not enjoy people who ride the fence. Asking you to choose a side, seemingly indifferent about which side you decide, the name of the LP admires people of assurance. In light of Target’s $150,000 campaign contribution to a homophobe, leaving leftists without a superstore to confide in (and effectively making them fence riders), a band that stands for conviction is particularly refreshing this week. 

The music of The Growlers inspires a breed of artistic mania that only a few bands, most of them from the late 60’s/early 70’s, have achieved. The sort of obsession that obeys no laws, and if it does we do not know what they are. If you have even an inkling of creativity, I urge you to approach your craft whilst bumping this disc. Lyrically, Are You In Or Are You Out? is a series of beautifully confusing musings reminiscent of Jim Morrison’s approach to songwriting. If Almost Famous was your go to late night flick to throw on in the dorm to prove to girls that you had the indelicate suggestiveness of an “R” rating, but the wit and universality of a “PG-13”, then you undoubtedly associate Mr. Morrison with Lester Bangs classic assessment of the Doors front-man as “a drunken buffoon posing as a poet”.

Acknowledging the accuracy of the Bangs line, I hope to cast Brooks Nielson (the Growlers lead singer) as a partial Morrison, and therefore only a partial drunken buffoon. Admittedly, Nielson’s words are all over the place during much of the album. Supposing that his Father has the same name, on “Something Someone Jr.”Neilson repeats, “My name is someone junior, who is my dad? Mama is a Catherine Anne Hoover and she’s all that and a bag”. Did Nielson come from a single parent home? Is “Something Someone Jr.” a statement on the prominence of divorce? These thoughts come to mind when the phrase “who is my Dad?” is reiterated throughout the song. Then there are moments when the buffoonery takes center stage. “Tijuana” opens with the lines, “Ether in the ice/ revenge for the water/ there’s a thorn in your taco/ and where is your daughter/ madness in the meat/ dead dogs in the street/ little babies scrappin for money that they don’t get to keep”. The Growlers reside about two hours north of Tijuana (Long Beach), and their song, albeit bleak, is a rather accurate description of the feeling that TJ radiates on its visitors. Are You In Or Are You Out offers an even flow between songs, even if one is a rock opus and the next a slow burner, the record has the sort of consistency that makes it an enjoyable listen straight through or on shuffle.

And it is long. What feels more like a double album, the 18 tracks on the record are a beautiful mix of 60’s freak out, folk calmness and surf rock. Imagine Jim Morrison overseeing a manage a trios between Tony Valentino of The Standells, Alex Turner of the Artic Monkeys, and James Skelly of The Coral. It makes for a beautiful mix, and the consistency of the lengthy effort is commendable. As the guy (B. Kramer) who sits next to me at the music blog I am interning for this summer put it, in his review of the album six months ago, “The bouncing, frenzied and yet tame feel of Are You In Or Are You Out? is a welcome dose of something different – something you can listen to from start to finish, or from finish to start”.

Below is a video for “Acid Rain”. It is apparent that the budget was minimal for the shoot, but the song gets to the heart of The Growlers sound. Another clip below finds the whole band, including a coyote clad Neilson, in a bizarro death pact moment. The video for “Little Miss Jack” leaves the viewer to ascertain what, exactly, is wrong with a seemingly unhinged Nielson, for whom digital video is a perfect vehicle for artistic exorcism.  words////SN

Note: In P1 I said “search engines”. Bing is a reputable search engine, I know because I Googled it.