Good Luck Everybody - AJJ: Review
is an Arizona based folk punk band who pioneered the genre in the 2000's with their 2007 record People Who Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People In The World. They stumbled back into critically acclaim with 4th record 2011's Knife Man. Since then they've dropped two records and gone through a name change from Andrew Jackson Jihad but haven't really been back in the indie spotlight until now.
Review By Lavender:
I have a pretty strong affinity for AJJ's two best records but their career has definitely been hit or miss. What got me so excited for this album was the trio of great singles the band dropped leading up to it. While I don't think the record is as groundbreaking as some of those that preceeded it I do think its their best record in almost a decade and finally brings the great sense of contemporary satire that I always look for from the band back in spades.
First lets talk about those three great singles that made me and so many others so excited about this album. A Poem is the opening track as well as a hilarious and brutal takedown of the music industries victim complex. Normalization Blues is absolutely folk as fuck with some more fantastic lyrics that look at the woes of contemporary society and how shallow they can be. The satire here is brutal and absolute bites in the best way making for an absolutely must hear tune. Mega Guillotine 2020 was the middle single, and with a name like that, come on, the song is absolutely hilarious. The track sounds like a nursery rhyme for all of our hellish outlooks on life.
With this great variety of tracks that got this era started off for the band, the rest of the tracks here are mainly hit or miss. Body Terror Song is a funny track initially but with the incredibly low-fi vocals getting in the way of some of the inflection it turns corny very quickly for such a short song. Feedbag is another track that gets off too a good start with its funny title refrain, but it reuses the golden age line from one of the singles and isn't nearly as climactic as any of the records best songs. Maggie sounds like a song from a Car Seat Headrest demo tape and its one of the only tracks on the record that I really can't stand.
No Justice, No Peace, No Hope is one of the albums most indulgent tunes and while I love the heavenly vocal harmonies I can't help but wonder if this track could have used a bit of a faster composition given how much it has to say. Loudmouth is one of the more straightforward songs of the bunch that is genuinely catchy without some of the depth that the other songs have.
The record ends off on a pretty high note too as some of the tracks in the second half form a pretty great ending. Psychic Warfare is an amazing song that feels like the low-fi indie folk high concept equivalent of YG's FDT and the lyrics are so hilariously scathing I can't help but return to the song constantly. Your Voice, As I Remember It is a sincere and pretty unique kind of love song that is a cute break from all the flicky guitar work and politics. The closing track A Big Day For Grimley contains a 4th wall break about when the album will be released, a somber and hopeless outlook for the future and a simple acoustic instrumental. The track is a pretty great summary of the entire record to end it off.
Good Luck Everybody isn't perfect but it sees AJJ return to a style of songwriting and performance that I have missed as nobody stepped in to fill their place. The songs here manage to be stunningly contemporary and the low-fi aesthetic of the record is fulfilling on almost every track. While the record self-imposes most of its limitations with short songs and a tracklist that lasts under 30 minutes, it is still a rapid fire assault that succeeds time and time again with sharp satire and witty political commentary. 7/10
