“Should I wake up & explain myself to you? / Or should I not care? Just sleep the whole day through?” – MxPx, “Under Lock and Key”
We’re maximuming our plaid here, folks! That’s right, I’m somehow doing another MxPx album.
To reiterate: there is a point to all this looking back: Lazy & Entitled has another record coming out soon, a Shipwrecked Sailor record (more accurately b & the shipwrecked sailor, but there’s some name tweaks maybe coming, more on that later). It’s going to be more in line with Brendan and my punk roots than Weight of An Anchor. I quit drinking and can play guitar fast again, who knew?
MxPx was one of if not my favorite band for a long while there. Does MxPx count as skatepunk? Poppunk? At 16, I was most comfortable right between those two genres, as I saw them. MxPx had one of the cooler names out there, they stayed true to three-piece minimalism, and (importantly) they were vocal Christians. I’ve always liked my punk with a message—if you can barely play your instrument, you better get me amped up to love my fellow humans and pursue righteousness.
Then 2003’s Before Everything & After came out, which kinda revealed MxPx was slowing down, creatively and physically. My tastes changed, and when I was fresh out of college and mad at organized religion the way only 22-year-olds can be, I heard salacious, scandalous things about one of the members that I cannot now confirm or find evidence of. Still, for a longer time than I was a fan, MxPx lived in my head as “uncreative hypocrites.”
Today I’m going to see if their first- or second-best album holds up.
Next week, I’ll do something different.
Under Lock and Key
Good vibes flooding back, this is a great duo of opening songs. Shoutout to the poppunk breakdown. Shoutout, again, to Yuri Ruley.
Tomorrow’s Another Day
This is the song that made me love MxPx. At the middle school talent show where my very first band barely kept it together playing Green Day’s “Brainstew,” some 8th graders covered this song. I knew their guitarist, Graham, from soccer. He had a Paul Walker-level smile and I thought he was the coolest dude, and then he had a candy apple red Fender and ripped this song from a band I’d never heard of with Xs in their name. Man. Shoutout Graham, Ian, and Andrew. Shoutout local bands.
The Final Slowdance
Ignore the cloying, whinging title—there’s something here. A real song. This album sounds more mature than earlier MxPx without them giving up being a punk band. The guitars are thicker, the chord progressions less immediately identifiable.
I’m OK, You’re OK
A touch possessive of the singer’s romantic partner if you forget—as MxPx does not want you to forget—that tour sucks. Good in the “sometimes punk bands do 60s songs” way.
Cold and All Alone
Fights with your partner are no fun, it’s true.
Party, My House, Be There
Not as good as Blink 182’s “The Party Song.” It’s a little bit Superbad: The Song. There’s plenty of guitar stuff to like here, though, like the high-pitched palm muting in that one verse, the ironic little Chuck Berry-style shuffle hammering on a power chord, the choppy chord riff at the end.
The Downfall of Western Civilization
Do you think MxPx listened to Neutral Milk Hotel or The Mountain Goats in 1998? Who else was doing big 6/8 intros in the 90s? Does Wax Fang’s La La Land happen without this song?
Invitation to Understanding
Hey dude, we all have days where nothing makes sense. What can you do, especially when there’s nothing on TV?
Fist vs Tact
Hey, a throwback to MxPx’s more hardcore, pokinatcha days. Appreciate you dudes changing it up.
What’s Mine Is Yours
It’s nothing new to say music can elicit involuntary emotional responses. There’s something about the guitar tone at 2:20 and 2:30, though, that sounds just enough like rain against your window on the day your girlfriend dumped you and the kitten you found in the garage had to get put down because it wasn’t with its mother long enough to learn to feed itself that my sinuses get a little runny whenever I hear it. Even now.
MxPx being Christians from Washington state who would later contribute to the Passion Of The Christ soundtrack, I have to wonder if this is a song about libertarianism. Like they’re anti-taxes or anti-No Fault Divorce, something. It’s probably about record labels, tho.
Self Serving With a Purpose
Totally forgettable until that breakdown at 1:20, that shit rocks.
For Always
“If we help each other out along the way / then maybe everything will be okay”
“What have we done? What can we do? / We search our whole lives for the truth”
Wow what lyrics for being a leftist in 2024. Cringe song tho.
Set the Record Straight
The song whose intro got me to buy Elixir guitar strings, if memory serves. Love when the IV chord changes from major to minor. MxPx would later make the whole album out of the IV chord changing from major to minor, and it almost entirely sucked.
Get with It!
“Kid quit it / get with it / you’re getting on my nerves / is this what I deserve?”
Wow a whole punk song about fatherhood (jk my kid rules).
Inches from Life
One of those “you’re not wrong” choruses but it’s wrapped in packaging that is not as muscular and heavy as the band writing it thinks.
The Theme Fiasco
Kinda surprised how much fun I had listening to this song. This song goes! I wish The Ever Passing Moment was 40 minutes of this! Idk, that’d probably get exhausting. For the second straight MxPx record, tho, I kinda wanna write a song like this.
What Scratches This Itch For Me Today:
Nostalgia is embarrassing, because do you really like music or were you just happier when you were 16? One answer is depressing. The point of looking back at records I liked in high school is to see where I am today, too.
This is how you grow up as a punk band, I think—but that’s not really something I seek out. Instead of Slowly Going The Way Of The Buffalo, I’d probably put on, idk, The Replacements or The Beatles or Pinkerton-era Weezer or someone else who uses chords in surprising but unflashy ways.
Verdict: I feel more nostalgic fondness than I thought I would
You don’t need to listen to MxPx, you certainly don’t need to put them on the pedestal I put them on in high school. But I don’t need to be mad at them anymore.
Shoutout to bands who try different things.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris