Arms Aloft
What A Time To Be Barely Alive
Red Scare Industries
It comes as no surprise that Arms Aloft fell on their soviet radar of Red Scare Industries during transmissions north of the base. Upon first spin, What A Time To Barely Be Alive is reminiscent of label alumni, The Menzingers and Success. It’s good company to be associated with, as the sound crawls into bed with the cold war—or at least communicates the hard times they feel in the bitter Northern tips of our nation. It’s gritty like a finely aged gouda.
Hailing from Wisconsin, I’ll dodge further cheese references, and instead elaborate on what makes this a great album. Being their second full-length release following 2012’s Sawdust City, they approach this with their “old in punk years” aesthetic. The extremely melodic rhythms keep it seemingly wholesome like any good Midwest punk band does. As you listen deeper Seth Giles scrappy vocals reveal the struggle, “we keep getting poorer, but they swear we’re fine, because we keep getting fatter.” That sums up our current classism pretty well, with corporations pressuring cheap, low quality grub on a working class without any remorse for all the ill fate. “The Truth Is Out There” encompasses a depressing slew of realities of private interests pulling strings. The maze of misinformation clouts people’s thoughts and arteries, and it’s a damn crime.
“Hollowlujah” is an exquisitely somber track, opening with, “Dinner for one, and a double gin and tonic.” Giles mumbles about missing having someone to tell him that things will be okay, as he struggles with something about trading Wayne Gretzky as a means to an end. He has another gin and tonic. I can’t honestly make out what the track is all about lyrically, but I love the mood. It sounds like a dude drinking a bit more than he should, and rambling out his feelings as a stream of self-consciousness with a lightly plugged in guitar. It’s tender and tangy, like a bleary-eyed piece of brie.
More and more, musicians passing their quarter of a century are coming to terms with their surroundings. Maybe we’re in another age of enlightenment where out first step is acknowledgement. Listen to that title, What A Time To Barely Be Alive, Arms Aloft are grasping onto the good no matter how buried it may seem with banging harmonies and ringing riffs.
Purchase What A Time To Barely Be Alive here.
