Standing Over By The Record Machine: The Interrupters just might save us all from Dullsville yet.

11-year-old Los Angeles ska-punk mixologists pour everything great about ‘em into poppin’-fresh platter Into The Wild, and then some. Every other contender for 2022's Best LP can give up now.

THE INTERRUPTERS - In The Wild (Hellcat/Epitaph)

This ol’ world’s developed so many calluses over its taste buds from 20+ years of hollow record company hype servicing disposable-yet-well-crafted crap, any declaration that this-or-that record or record-maker is merely good nets nothing but a jaded yawn. But The Interrupters’ poppin’-fresh In The Wild just hit the scene today. And if three gift-bearing kings don’t arrive at their Los Angeles doorstep via camel now, we’re well and truly fucked.

Singer Aimee Interrupter and the instrument-operating Bivona brothers – Telecaster master Kevin and twins Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass) – have spent the past 11 years mastering the twin arts of precision old-school punk and premium ska/bluebeat/reggae, dicing-n-slicing and mixing-n-matching at will and with skill. The Bivonas are the latest byproduct of a longstanding L.A. musical dynasty, and served time in Tim Timebomb And Friends, the loose cast Operation Ivy/Rancid/Transplants/Hellcat Records mainman Tim Armstong assembled for occasional collaboration. Aimee Allen, meantime, escaped a rough Montana foster home background to rise to a modestly-successful-if-itinerant musical career in Los Angeles, drifting through a punk band or two and a spell as a solo artist. A chance 2009 meeting with the Bivonas led to Aimee and Kevin developing a songwriting collaboration two years later. Using the twins as a rhythm section on demos spawned both a new band and a new surname for Aimee.

11 years’ hard graft later, through three excellent studio LPs, an electrifying live album, and incessant touring (including high profile stints with Rancid, Green Day, and Bad Religion), The Interrupters are now a machine. They are The Face Of Rebel Rock 2022. Their gigs feel like a gospel tent revival writ large, with Johnny Ramone guitars and Brad Bradbury/Horace Panter rhythms. There’s a ferocity to their lyrical defiance: “She got arrested/For shooting down her man,” rhapsodized one instant classic, “She Got Arrested” from 2016 second LP Say It Out Loud. “U.S. Marshals/Caught her outside of Spokane/She said, ‘I'd do it again/Do it again/Do it again, I'd do it again.’” Then there’s Aimee Interrupter’s 50 megaton charisma. She takes such obvious joy in this music and her role making it, and in working with KevinJustinJesse, while simultaneously delivering two middle fingers to anyone or anything standing in her or The Interrupters’ way, in life or in music. More than likely, the current crop of budding female rockers must look up to her with the same admiring eyes Brody Dalle or Joan Jett received.

(For that matter, could a case be built for The Interrupters being Joan Jett And The Blackhearts with some Jamaican rhythms coursing through their veins? Aimee does not have a Gibson slung around her black leather shoulders. But everything else is on point here. And there is the heart-warming scene in last year’s fine documentary This Is My Family where Jett graciously received an audience with an emotional Aimee on tour. She clearly has a huge heart that’s absolutely in the right place.)

What is certain is that their fourth studio full-length In The Wild is the culmination of all The Interrupters have learned the past 11 years. Thanks to a certain pandemic, they had all the time in the world to carefully craft its every aspect. They also had the space in which to do it – the garage at the band’s L.A. home is now their recording studio, in an all-hands-on-deck DIY build tutored by YouTube home remodeling how-to videos. And with Armstrong sidelined in his traditional Interrupters production role by the pandemic – he still duets with Bodysnatchers legend Rhoda Dakar on “As We Live” – Kevin assumed those duties like a champ. He gave In The Wild just enough sonic gloss to make your speakers throb nicely, without sacrificing any of the band’s rootsiness or raw power. But The Interrupters would never have had the confidence before to tackle a string-quartet-and-acoustic-piano-driven ballad, ala the set-closing “Alien.” Then again, with AImee’s lyric taking the root of the term “alienation” at face value, it could also be The Interrupters’  attempt at a David Bowie extraterrestrial mood piece such as “Starman.” Newfound ambition is always welcome.

Aimee’s lyrics take center stage here. Every word she penned for this album is clearly personal. Not that her past work was ever im-personal. But has there ever been a better ode to burning down a personal Babylon than the opening track, “Anything Was Better?” Over the most crunching widescreen punk rock they’ve crafted, Aimee recounts running from a past painted in shades of gray, to embrace a technicolor future in rock ‘n’ roll: “I’m thankful for the lessons/But the memories are dark/Good riddance to that home/Where the nightmare had begun/Yea anything was better/Than where I was from.” In fact, there’s more straight-up punk rock on this than any previous Interrupters disc - five out of the fourteen songs are pogo-ers, with “My Heart” being a big-beat girl group pastiche complete with a Spectoresue wall of sound as a bonus. The rest gallop across varying shades of ska and reggae with fire and skill.

But what about those words? Aimee’s lyrics read like particularly poetic journal entries, set to highly melodic, sky-punching ska and punk anthems. They have a lot of heart, even if it’s encased in barbed wire. “Raised By Wolves” addresses a negligent parent: “Might be a liar, might be a drunk/But I forgive you for your giving up/It doesn’t matter, my life was shattered/And my heart’s got holes/You left a child, out in the wild/And I was raised by wolves.” “In The Mirror” expresses the dichotomy of a performer seeking comfort in their own skin, while trying to entertain the crowd: “I always felt so out of place/In a crowded room, I speak too soon/Yeah I put a big smile on my face/I can’t let them know it’s all for show, no.’  “Jailbird,” meanwhile, deals with the asshole inside everyone’s head, tormenting us on the daily: “The trauma skips like an old CD/That’s all scratched up from my OCD/Year after year I hear the screaming in my ears and it/Echoes on like a jailbird.” 

Basically, The Interrupters just dropped the year’s best album four months from its end. All other contenders can now give up and go home. Whether this is the one that breaks them commercially is about as predictable as Texas weather (aside from summertime, which this year is “hotter than balls, every fucking day!”). And that’s not really the point anyway, is it?  The point is supposed to be whether or not In The Wild is a good record. And The Interrupters made a great record. It converts the ions in the atmosphere every time you spin it. It’s delicious. Pick it up today and fall in love.

Chapter Five, Part One of The Austin Punk Chronicles is up now!

Drummer Marilyn Dean and guitarist Kathy Valentine of Austin’s First Punk Band The Violators, photographed in 1978 by Lois Richwine.

The continuing serialization of my Austin punk book resumes with this week’s issue of The Austin Chronicle. The Shock of the New – The Violators and The Skunks Invade Raul’s details how a Tejano bar on The Drag opened its doors to the city’s budding punk scene, complete with a video of former owner (and now a Catholic priest) Father Roy Gomez entering the former Raul’s location for the first time since he sold it in 1980. Get the scoop by clicking this link.

Thank you, as always, for reading this. I am grateful to each and every one of you for your unanimously enthusiastic support. I am humbled. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, and maybe share this with your friends. 

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