Green Day were formed in Rodeo, California, in 1987. Two years later, in Wolverhampton, Swaktang entered the world, kicking and screaming like all punk bands should. A decade after their formation, Swaktang wrote Why Are We Not Famous?, which they have only just released. The band say “it’s a long story” – indeed, about a quarter of a century long. But no matter – Why Are We Not Famous? could have been written yesterday or in 1976 when punk was born.
The album kicks off with ‘Hey Zeus’, and as informal greetings to Greek gods go, it’s a brilliant welcome, make no myth take. It’s not certain whether following track ‘Better Dead Than Blue’ is a pithy put down to a Birmingham City FC fan or a declaration that shuffling off this mortal coil is preferable to membership of the Conservative Party. One would guess that it’s the latter, if only for the line “Put the world to rights”. Regardless of the actual subject matter, the track will make you flail your limbs like an angry spider.
‘I Got’ is the Black Country’s ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, though it’s even more exhaustingly frantic than the Ramones classic, coming in as it does in under two minutes. The chorus from ‘Pressure’ includes the nihilistic yet lovely lyric “I’m sick of everything but you”, but more importantly, the whole track is another blitzkrieg bop. ‘Why Are We?’ begins with an expletive, and thus immediately makes it clear that it is in no way similar to the Bros ‘classic’ that asks a similar question about the elusiveness of mass adoration.
A medlar is a large shrub or small tree in the rose family. ‘The Medlar’ is a Swaktang track that will have you pogoing while paradoxically repeating the refrain “no more words!” Indeed, there are more words on the next track, ‘Girl Drink Drunk’, and the tracks after that. ‘Unbreakable’ hurtles along in typical breakneck speed, and there’s no time to rest before next track ‘Keep on Rockin’, which is not a plea to continue your petrology hobby, but rather more encouragement to move your body. You would be forgiven for thinking that ‘Boogie Woogie’ might be a piano-led genre shift, but no – guitar is still centre stage.“Down in the jungle with the birds and the bees / You got a little scratch monkey picking up fleas” – nursery rhyme punk, anyone?
About two thirds of the way into album closer ‘Sticky Situation’, there is, dare I say, a beautiful period of respite from the punk frenzy before a final burst of a chorus that Sum 41 would bust a gut to match. Swaktang do fast and loud very well while not forgetting melody. They claim that nailing down their influences is akin to sequencing the DNA of a dartboard. That may be so, but we can be sure that Why Are We Not Famous? hits the bullseye.
Why Are We Not Famous? is out now on Bandcamp.
By: Neil Laurenson