The Milkmen’s punk sensibility melded perfectly with my teenage angst. Their joyously anarchic lyrics thrilled me to no end, and the diversity of their music opened my mind to quite a few new genres and sounds I had not previously explored, which sent me down a road that I continue to walk today.

 

When the opportunity to review the Dead Milkmen’s latest release Pretty Music for Pretty People came about, I may have pulled a muscle by virtue of the speed with which I put in my request. I’m very glad that I did, because this album bleeds sheer awesomeness all over my computer, out of my speakers, and onto the floor.

 

The title track opens the album and brought me back to 1989. “Pretty Music for PRetty People” crisply deconstructs modern pop music - the kind that wins Grammys - as light and fluffy ephemera not worth the attention it gets (which is a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly and have for years). “We can’t wait till you have that breakdown/And you’re sitting in rehab cryin’ every day/Cause we know the next that we’ll hear your music/Is when we’re all dancing on your grave” pretty much sums up the sentiments of the song (and this reviewer).

 

The two and a half decades since Beelzebubba find both the members of the Milkmen as well as myself older, deeper, and angry about new things. In “Big Words Make the Baby Jesus Cry,” the guys take on the anti-intellectualism of the modern evangelical Christian movement. Lines like “There once was a woman who had nothing to say, but she still felt the need to say it anyway” and “Atheists run the public schools while communists piss into the public pools” they effectively assess the religious situation in modern society.

 

In “I’ve Got to Get My Numbers Up,” the band takes on territory previously dominated by Fountains of Wayne: the drudgery of living a business lifestyle and the mindless ruthlessness of capitalistic competition. Lines like “Drowning in a sea of red tape, and I never learned to swim” wouldn’t be out of place on an FOW album, but it’s definitely fresh and true to the Milkmen.

 

The joyous exuberance of youth has been tempered by several decades of living in a post-Reagan America, and the excellence of the tunes remains high, but the lyrics and subject matter have gotten deeper since “Bad Party” and “My Many Smells. This doesn’t mean nothing light and frothy remains; “The Great Boston Molasses Flood” tells a historical tale that, while tragic, contains quite a bit of farce. “Sweet, sticky death is headed my way” illuminates the absurdity of the molasses flood, while creating a political and serious metaphor that offers an anachronistic critique of modern business regulations.

 

While Rodney Anonymous, Joe Jack Talcum, Dandrew Stevens, and Dean Clean manage a decent variety of sounds on Pretty Music, they still remain in the “punk” bin of the local record shop. These songs adhere a little tighter to a common sound and sensibility than their older albums. This is less criticism than observation - the album is fantastic. While this may run contrary to my ongoing critique of modern metal as lacking the fun that ‘80s metal embodied - and lacking guitar solos too, dammit - the Milkmen’s continuing maturity only improves them. The humor remains, but manifests itself as satire. Found somewhere in the spectrum between Iggy Pop and Weird Al, the Dead Milkmen remain a force to be reckoned with. While that force may not be Pretty Music for Pretty People, it certainly is important music for awesome people.