AJJ – Good Luck Everybody

After navigating the functional closure of their former label, SideOneDummy Records, AJJ released a few simple EPs, a Lost Works compilation, and started managing the release of new material through their own label, AJJ unlimited LTD.  Through it all the band hasn’t skipped a beat, with the outspoken, scrappy quartet persisting in their uniquely cynical worldview of a nation on the path to self destruction.  Having evolved from a place of raw emotional turmoil blending personal anguish with astute social awareness, the band shoulders collective pain and suffering where others turn a bind eye.

Their seventh studio album, Good Luck Everybody, is a self proclaimed “album that is reflective of our times.”  In other words, much like the Anti-Flag album released on the same day, Good Luck Everybody is a Donald Trump retrospective aiming to remind listeners of his track record on the lead up to the possibility of another four years in office.  With the next American election looming, Good Luck Everybody paints a snapshot of what the world has become over his first term.  Sean Bonnette’s distinctly anguished voice and unwaveringly emotional songwriting guides tracks like “Normalization Blues,” in which painfully specific descriptions take target our collective complacency.   “He’s a symptom and a weapon of the evil men who really run the show,” speaks Bonnette, reminding us that one man’s actions are merely the systemic manifestations of wider corporate agendas by those “who melt down human beings into money like a cruel sorcerer’s stone.”

AJJ draws much of their inspiration from some of their older material without shedding the layers of experimentalism that has come to define their more recent material.  For instance, “Mega Guillotine 2020” serves as a slow, simple ode to an imagined election candidate that relies upon a voter base from the bible belt, achieving a tongue in cheek sarcasm with simple strumming layered under ringing chimes and church bells.  Meanwhile, others like “Maggie” revert to straightforward recording techniques that feel like Bonnette was held up in his bedroom, not unlike classic albums from AJJ’s days at Asian Man Records.  “Psychic Warfare” serves as one of the disc’s most outwardly pointed and lyrically vindictive, channelling an unhinged political passion that should be familiar for the long time AJJ faithful.  Coupled with a backdrop of violin-style strings and salty language, the track achieves a level of juxtaposition that comes natural to AJJ.

Those of us that have followed AJJ for the bulk of their career have always come to expect the unexpected with each passing album.  Good Luck Everybody offers fans a return to familiarity, which might be a revolutionary sonic leap, but is certainly an unpredictable change of course.  As always, the band wraps their political views and ideas in a tangled web of emotion and observation, foreshadowing future outcomes based on past lessons.  Now, there are a lot of albums that tackle Trump’s track record, so the subject matter is relevant but far from groundbreaking. Released a year before the next election campaign, AJJ writes, “We can only hope that this material will be dated next year and AJJ can move on to worthier subjects.”  Like NOFX’s George W. Bush critique, The War On Errorism, AJJ’s Good Luck Everybody will likely fade into the shadow of their discography over time, but shine brightly for this brief and hyper-relevant moment.