(Sub Pop)
The Rhode Island five-piece return with a ferocious rallying call to fight for your beliefs, with bouncing basslines, muted house chords and stomping drums
Optimism might feel outdated, but Downtown Boys are proud outliers. On Public Luxury, the Rhode Island band’s third and best album, they wear their politics proudly – while bringing new ambiguity, strangeness and shadow to their passionate, sax-blasted bilingual punk. Opener No Me Jodas (Don’t F*** With Me) comes out roaring, fists up, but gives way to a bouncing, joyous bassline: a brutal, big-hearted reminder that there’s beauty in fighting for what you believe in.
In the nine years since the band’s last record, they’ve served as public defenders and co-founded the United Musicians and Allied Workers union, and the five-piece sound muscled-up, reinvigorated, by this work. Viva La Rosa kicks off like dive-bar punk, before transforming into something grander, with soaring electric guitar and darkly beautiful lyrics: “Todavía creo en un future / Todavía veo nuestros muertos” (I still believe in a future / I still see our dead).
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