Stacked Like Pancakes was formed in 2007 and has seen its share of ups and downs. Well, 2024 is definitely a time for ups. This 6 song EP shows off a ton of range on style- it’s almost hard to believe these are all the same artist. Five of the six songs feature guest artists, and after listening to the album I had to message the band to see what their songwriting process was. I assumed the guest artists actually co-wrote the music for the songs they were featured in because the songs do such a good job of capturing the essence of the featured artist’s style and blending it with Stack Liked Pancakes own sound, and it became the only logical explanation. So, unsurprisingly, I was wrong. Stacked Like Pancakes is just that talented and their 17-year career has allowed them to thrive at writing a broad range of songs.
“Everything happens for a reason, well fuck everything”- and that is how the album begins. This is the only song on the album to not feature another artist and the pre-release single. The song was released back in June and it slipped under my radar. The album art features a bunch of hands flipping middle fingers in the style of Superbad pens art. A butterfly with two hands flipping middle fingers instead of wings, a hand flipping a middle finger, sitting on a lawn chair, while flipping a middle finger. The art, combined with the opening lyrics, and a rock with clear, strong, almost Reel Big Fish- esque horns and I thought I knew where this album was going- strong third wave angst filled ska- rock. And while that’s not entirely wrong, there is definitely more to it than that. First, not even this song is fast and angsty or juxtaposing really happy beats against sad or angry lyrics. The song shifts to a more tonally appropriate rhythm and lyrics like “I’m done, I swear, YouTube repair, search up how to fix my life” take more of a tone of self-help and active involvement as opposed to just angst.
The second track, “Castaway” features New Jersey’s “Keep Flying” and feels more punk and emo than the rest of the album. The horns in this song are great, and while the song tends to stray away from ska, it’s still a great song. The vocals sound bigger and more epic, and the drums do a lot of the lifting in this song, carrying the rhythm through parts of the song that otherwise focus on just the vocals or horns. Honestly, it is both a solid track to show the breadth of the band and, possibly, my least favorite song on the album, but that speaks more to the strength of the album than the weakness of the song.
The third track on the album features Devon Kay & the Solutions out of Chicago (who just released their own 2 song EP in July). This song doesn’t just feature the style of DK&S but also captures their humor. Titled “Your Mom’s a Homie” it is a spoof of trash talk and dis tracks, instead using the opportunity to talk about how great someone’s mom was and still is, from providing orange slices while they were kids to telling them to go tell their mom something wonderful today.
Track 4 is “Taylor Swift” featuring Suburban Legends, but isn’t actually about Taylor Swift, instead, it’s about getting older and a fear of never making it in the music industry, and the 5th track features Shelby Muniz of Hoity Toity. I think the Hoity Toity song is the most intriguing song on the album, fully titled “Do Not Remove This Tag! Warn Children of Death By Electric Shock”, it is ironically one of the more serious songs on the album. It has rock and roll ballad vibes with a vocal duet, it plays with some pacing and grand vocal styles that seem to come out of nowhere.
The final song on the album, “Nihilist” is the one that I can’t resist thinking about. Featuring Scott Klopfenstein of the Littlest Man Band, it was 100% written specifically for him. The intro features a simple rhythm on the keyboard that matches Scott’s own piano style, and Scott Klopfenstein sings the intro verse with minimal musical arrangement in order to highlight his style, and it works gloriously. The Littlest Man Band is one of my favorite non-ska bands of all time, and this feels exactly like something they would write, having Scott do the vocals was perfect. The lyrics including the phrase “Drunk Again” as a reference to one of Scott Klopfenstein’s most successful songs he’s written assure me that this song was written for him to sing and nobody else in the world. The song is great, it’s beautiful, and it really closes a masterpiece of an album by showcasing an incredible range of styles in mostly ska-adjacent spaces, but never afraid to delve into actual ska music at any point.
Written by Gimp Leg
