The Lawrence Arms - The Greatest Story Ever Told

The Lawrence Arms
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Fat Wreck Chords
Grade: A

As the latest and probably best salvo in the Lawrence Arms' brief but extremely productive time, The Greatest Story Ever Told can do no wrong. Well, that might not be the case, but it still rocks. Twelve tracks of blistering punk harmonies (plus an intro and outro) puts the Lawrence Arms in line for love from all sides of the aisle.

Formed in 1999 in Chicago as a spawn of the hotastic The Broadways, the three-piece of Brendan Kelly, Chris McCaughan and Neil Hennessy formed essentially to have fun, drink and play punk rock. However, they maintained and still maintain themes of leftist comments on political, social and moral matters that strongly characterized the essence of the Broadways. They quickly busted out two splits and two full-lengths for the ever-glorious Asian Man Records. This included the amazing splits with Shady View Terrace (s/t) and the Chinkees (Present Day Memories). The split with the Chinkees contains one of the best Lawrence Arms' songs amongst their releases in "Quincentuple Your Money." While worth the price of admission, their two full-lengths A Guided Tour of Chicago and Ghost Stories lacked the ingenuity and memorability that characterize their present material. Shortly there after they ended their recording affair with Asian Man - an affair that included releases by the members' previous bands including Slapstick and the Broadways - and signed on with the consistently improving Fat Wreck Chords. In 2002, LA released the breathtaking Apathy and Exhaustion as their first on Fat. This record brought the power of kick-ass back to the three-piece and reinvigorated their creativity. Now this, the latest and best offering: The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Instead of just flat-out copying what Brendan said about the album in our interview with him last month (www.exoduster.com/lawrencearmsinterview.html) and pretending its what I say, below is an excerpt of his comments on The Greatest Story:

How does the latest record "The Greatest Story Ever Told" differ with previous releases (e.g., in content)? Firstly, we're total dorks, and as such we've made a kind of a "concept album" this time. It just sounds like a regular record, but we snuck in a lot of nerdy, conceptual shit. For example, it's metaphorically consistent throughout, in that it uses the same poetic devices and metaphors in every single song. It also repeats musical themes in every song. Lyrically, the songs refer to one another; the intro and the outro are parts of a song in the middle, the last line is the same on both sides of the vinyl, the last line is also predicted in the middle of the record. All this and it's also a chapter by chapter allegory for "the Master and Margarita" by Mikail Bulgakov, with my songs functioning as the Moscow chapters and Chris's songs as the Jerusalem chapters. I told you, very nerdy.

Did you get that? Quickly, during the first track "The Raw and Searing Flesh" you realize that like a good piece of literature or philosophy or basically anything, its going to take some serious work to unpack all the pieces to the album. Besides from the rich and thick-textured lyrics that are ever-present in the songs by Brendan and Chris, they include footnotes to lyrics in the liner notes. I don't know if I have ever seen that before. It's like the book The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace where amongst the 1100-page work of fiction, he includes a hundred pages of footnotes. The good thing, though, is they are not trying to be the Dennis Miller of music (read: obscure and esoteric facts). Mostly the footnotes are very helpful. For instance, in one of the funniest notes on the song "On With the Show," they discuss the term ‘Juggalo.' For your enjoyment: "Juggalo - A fan of the (ahem) band, Insane Clown Posse often refers to his/her (almost always him) self as a ‘Juggalo.' They paint their faces, spray soda on each other, and respect the music of ICP and consequently get very little respect themselves." Other times the footnotes pertain to information about the band - like that Chris plays on stage left. The footnotes, then, do provide a tremendous amount of context for the lyrics.

Musically, The Greatest Story travels in familiar circles of previous Lawrence Arms records. Chris and Brendan switch off lead singing roles with each other while Neil provides strong backup. As noted above, the album launches on "The Raw and Searing Flesh" with a slow and deceptively mellow procession - and it builds until a bridge brings us back to blistering punk. The next track "On With the Show" finds the Lawrence Arms firing up the tempo and Brendan grabbing the lead and throttling the lyrics. "Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile" starts with familiar multi-layered guitars and sufficient bass and drum breakdowns on its way to being the best song on the record. Lawrence Arms follow it up with the catchy "Alert the Audience" complete with dual hushed vocals over muting guitars. Much of the album contains the sort of back-and-forth between the layered and weaving guitar song and the balls-to-the-walls punk numbers. While this at times can drive a divide in the consistency of an album, if you know anything of the Lawrence Arms or their lineage this is the essence of their existence. Other tracks that will force jaw-dropping include "Chapter 13: The Hero Appears," "The Ramblin' Boys of Pleasure," "A Wishful Puppeteer" and the finale "The Disaster March." Consistent with previous releases the finale serves as one of the album's best and a great match of the last song. It is interesting the Lawrence Arms seem to sequence their albums like they may play the songs live.

Now you have the latest information on one of the best independent album's of the year. Will you use this information wisely? Clearly, if you have been entranced by the Lawrence Arms or any of their bloodline in the past, then The Greatest Story Ever Told will renew your faith in this Chicago threesome. The Lawrence Arms are continuing on their quest of drinking and playing shows this winter with such bands as Against Me!, Hot Water Music and These Arms are Snakes. Join them in their debauchery.