ALBUM REVIEW: Druglords of the Avenues – Gotta Light (Pirates Press Records)
Druglords Of The Avenues is the long-running side project of Swingin’ Utters frontman Johnny ‘Peebucks’ Bonnel and this is their third album.
Formed in the Bay Area of California in 2004 with guitarist Matt Grayson, it’s the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s New Drugs.
Previously, influences from the fiery grit of punk and hardcore classics like Dwarves and Circle Jerks have been mixed with the ramshackle folk of The Pogues and the dark complexities of Pixies.
This record sees Bonnel and Grayson joined by guitarist Rob Pierce, bassist Michael Mininger, and drummer Robert Faria, and the result is a tasty brand of gritty street-punk.
They set their stall out from the start with opening track and lead single Ghetto Sidewalks. Propelled by breakneck guitars and a pummelling rhythm section, it’s a snapshot of decaying urban streets where “we’re always stumbling in the dark”.
That pace never relents as they hurtle through 10 street-level tales of poor and working class folk doing what they must to survive in less than 18 minutes, with only two of them passing the two-minute mark.
Mudders Boy channels early Rancid as Bonnel sings “You’re a momma’s boy, you’re fucking crazy/Of course I am, my mother raised me,” while Fall To Pieces is a heart on the sleeve song mourning the loss of a loved one.
Hitting the bottle to escape poverty is the subject of Pocket Find, while the self-reflective Nobody Here is about dealing with your own demons, and Death Can Always Keep Up is about coping with whatever life throws at you.
Making wrong choices and facing the consequences is examined on I Fold, and drinking to cope rears its head again on I Don’t Like You, where our protagonist is told: “Being pissed is a hell of a way/To go to work every day.”
Cause And Effect, which closes out the set, is the shortest song of the lot, just topping the one-minute mark, and it’s another one about growing up in poverty and accepting your lot.
There’s plenty of defiance here, but not a lot of hope. These are simply the stories of lives lived hard, and they hit hard and fast, though the album loses a mark for what seems to be deliberately lo-fi production. 7/10.
- Gotta Light by Druglords Of The Avenues is available on two different 12in picture discs from Pirates Press Records HERE.
