Back in January, I had never heard of Jacob the Horse. I was blissfully unaware. I was sitting in my imaginary office, legs up on my virtual desk. For some reason, I was smoking a cigarette and everything was in sepia tones. It was the slow season, and I didn’t have a lot to write about. The days were short and it was dark. My editor walks in, slides an envelope across the imaginary desk, and says “Look inside, I think you’ll like it”.
“What is it?” I ask, as I open the manila envelope to find a single. Just one song. Weirdly, it wasn’t even ska. “This isn’t my department. There must be a mistake.”
“It’s no mistake, give it a spin,” he says with a wink, as he shuts the door. I put in my headphones and started the track. He was right. There was no mistake. It wasn’t ska, but the message spoke to me. The song? It was good. Not good like- toe tapping, tune it out, I can tolerate this, or maybe I’ll hum along. This was good good. This was “Pull two lit Molotov cocktails from a mailbag and offer it to kids and ask if they wanna make some bacon” good.
This was a lead, and I needed to follow it and find out where it went. This wasn’t just a single: It was the first single on an upcoming album due out March 20th. The band: Jacob the Horse, out of Los Angeles, or at least that’s where they are now. This was their third album since 2017. An indie-punk outfit with a bit of rock flair. It wasn’t long before I got my hands on a copy of that upcoming album. I needed to find out what this was all about. It sounded too good to be true. I might have accidentally stumbled on my new favorite punk band.
I hit play. A piano and what sounds like a radio broadcast, warning of danger, and the need for a round the clock broadcast. The band joins in at the end, singing “At least it’s almost over…” This fades into the first actual track of the album – the aforementioned single – “Bad New Religion”. It’s a powerful critique on everything in the world right now: Tempered anger and frustration is full of biting lyrics, has a wonderful bridge that slows the tempo, and includes the only use of saxophone on the album that reaches into my soul and lifts me up. The song feels like an attack on end-stage capitalism: It references the fascist fucking capitalist who hates his own trans daughter and the idea that the wrong Kennedy died, it demands that we hang Nazis, it shouts out Luigi Mangione and decries for-profit health care, and doesn’t only condone violence, but acknowledges you’d have to be delusional to think we will ever see change without it.
This is what grabbed my attention. So: Does the rest of the album manage to deliver?
The first song that I hadn’t previously heard is “Tympanis”, and unsurprisingly, it leads off with drums and then bass, with a driving rhythm from both. It’s got a crazy melody that’s got its fucking hooks in me: “It ought to be a felony, to get me hooked to easily, I don’t deserve your sympathy, but someone please just set me free.” The tempo drives the tension builds, and this band is so talented. I haven’t liked pure punk like this in decades. Whether lyrics or rhythms, this band is doing things to me, and I’m hooked into the rhythm again!
“The Black Hand” feels like a 70s rock song, almost like AC/DC, except – instead of singing about his testicles – they are singing about anarchy, Satanism, and overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Lyrics like “Mercy me, mercy me, mercy me. We’re all in medical bankruptcy. Stockpile our guns and our gasoline so we can get some debt relief” are delivered in such a beautiful 70s rock fashion with such timely lyrics that it makes my heart swell. The chorus of “Communist parties keep me up all night / Dancing and singing about workers rights” almost feels like it belongs in a scene from Forrest Gump.
This leads directly into the next fucking banger, “Keystone State”, about moving from Pennsylvania to LA, the struggles of playing in a band, getting older, and the life that you might have lived. The song has some big guitars. Another brilliantly constructed song with great lyrics. The mix is amazing. A little bit of anxiety and depression, some clever lyrics, and just a lot of fun. I don’t know why this song hits so well, but I love it.
So, that’s five songs into the album, and I’ve discussed every one of them, because they are all amazing songs, and it should surprise absolutely no one if I said the next song is amazing also, but that’s because it is. In fact, this album has a dozen tracks and a dozen great songs. Every year there is one album that just blows me away that’s not ska, and I know this is that album this year, unless there is more than one album. Whether its Bob Vylan, Super Cassette, or the Wicked Bears, it always catches me off guard. How my editor knew to hand me this assignment is beyond me, but I’m grateful.
So now, I’m going to write about one more song on this album, because I don’t like to write about every song, or I absolutely would. And the sixth song I’m going to discuss is the sixth song on the album, because it’s got some of my favorite lyrics. It makes me want to dance. It gets me hyped. It is the Satanist, anti-fascist, feminist hype track “666 Chicks”. It’s catchy, its punk as fuck, and its functionality, but the second verse is “My grandmother Hannah used to throw Molotov cocktails at Nazis, and I’m paying $10 for coffee and writing bad poetry / There’s no hope for me”. I fucking love that lyric every single time I listen to the song. There are other great lyrics in the song, and it’s definitely one of my favorites, but on an album this good nearly every song is one of my favorites.
Anyway, I don’t want to write about every song on the album, and you should definitely go listen to the whole fucking album. So go make Grandma Hannah proud, listen to Jacob the Horse, and throw a Molotov at a Nazi. If you’re in America, they probably have an office at a city near you that they use as a base of operations to harass your local immigrant population.
Written by Gimp Leg
