The Lawrence Arms have always taken a Jekyll/Hyde kind of approach when writing records. Before 2006's Oh! Calcutta!, the standard Lawrence Arms format generally worked like this: bassist Brendan Kelly and guitarist Chris McCaughan would trade off songwriting, lyrical, and vocal duties sequentially on an album. The result was always a striking clash between Kelly's frantic and drunken punk rock rants rooted in his gravelly harsh voice, and McCaughan's pensive, poetic lyrics and emotional delivery.
Oh! Calcutta!, the Lawrence Arms' most recent full-length release, takes everything unique about the band's past methods and fuses it into one coherent, urgent piece, kind of like Frankenstein's monster.
Here, Kelly and McCaughan combine their songwriting talents and create a unified body of songs that fluidly transition into one another. While I wouldn't say the record is vastly superior over any other they have released (2003's The Greatest Story Ever Told closely beats this record as my favorite), Oh! Calcutta! is the Lawrence Arms at their most fully realized, both in songwriting and especially in lyrical content.
Oh! Calcutta! stands out to me in two particular ways: the duet style vocals and in lyrics. It seems that Kelly and McCaughan must have realized how writing songs together vastly changes their musical direction. On nearly every song, there lies the two songwriters' signature methods. On songs like "Are You There Margret? It's Me, God." and "Old Dogs Never Die," the two quickly trade off lines and couplets, almost like a conversation, or a challenge for the other to top his previous line. It works perfectly- the dual nature of two singers with not only distinct vocal talents, but delivery and inflection add a split personality quality to the songs that was only hinted at in previous releases. When they're not splitting the lines within the song, Kelly and McCaughan sing in unison, providing a delicate balance and blending into a singular voice, equal parts violent and sensitive.
The duality within the songs is even more apparent when analyzing their lyrics. McCaughan is still his analogy-ridden self (not that there's anything wrong with that) here, confessing on "Lose Your Illusion I" that he's "sober like a Sunday morning Mass" and "lonely like a lazy weekend," while Kelly continues to elude to less metaphorical imagery, to say the least ("You've got those moves and those eyes / I've got these shakes and bad breath / Eww" on "The Devil's Takin' Names"). What's so great is that these conflicting styles coexist so naturally against each other, even within the same song. They add an entirely new dimension to the band's lyrics.
There is an overarching theme on this record, that being the determination to rise above disadvantages and to refuse self-effacing attitudes. "Tonight, tonight, I'm walking away / I don't want to hear about old days/ What are we doing today?," both singers wail on the chorus of "Jumping the Shark," before proposing an echoing toast: "Let's drink to the death of regret!" "Beyond the Embarrassing Style" serves a bit as a cautionary tale, advising the character addressed to retreat from a damaging lifestyle: "Your life spins like a carousel / Your hopes are buried in a wishing well/ Awake in a grave that you dug yourself / Just keep on running on that horse you love".
The Lawrence Arms clearly have created something not only unique in their discography, but also among the steadily crowding punk rock genre. Oh! Calcutta! is enormously creative, original, and boundary-pushing. There's a reason that the Lawrence Arms are highly acclaimed within the punk community, and this record attests to that. Even if you think you don't care for the loud/fast kind of thing, go listen to this. Released on Fat Wreck Chords, so go get it from their website or your neighborhood record store. You can even get it from those internet music stores (those are cool, right?)
Hey, here's a video, too!
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