Album Review: Middle-Aged Queers – Too Fag For Love

Oakland, CA’s Middle-Aged Queers release their debut album on 14th March. The queercore quartet, who refer to themselves as ‘Jurassic Punx’ – members have previously been in bands such as Flipper, Wet-Nap, Saviours, and No Alternative among others – are issuing the record via their own Outpunx Records label, in a collaboration with Bay Area indie Sell The Heart Records, run by Andy Pohl of Tsunami Bomb.

Recorded in less than 8 hours for less than $500, ‘Too Fag For Love’ is a rowdy, scrappy 20-odd minute rock n’ roll jaunt. Reportedly, 90% of the album was captured live in no more than 2 takes, and this sense of directness is reflective of the members’ experiences as seasoned veterans of the DIY-Punk scene. It also shines/scuffs through in the music, too, which does sound as if it’s played (as the band claim) through ‘gear held together by duct tape’.

If the group’s aesthetic and the album’s title itself didn’t give the game away, naming tracks ‘Bike Cock’ and ‘I Got the Gay Edge’ indicate a band unashamedly embracing themselves. Opening with the ridiculous immediacy of ‘Gary’s Making Biscuits’, the 8 songs barrel by in a blur of half-step chord slides, machine gun drumming and hysterically harmonised gang vocals. But even within the limited run time, there are shades within the songs that make them far from one-dimensional. ‘SoDoMe’ erupts from day-glo crunch into an overtly inappropriate sing-along; ‘Frankenstein’s Alive’ adds a touch of schlock; there’s something of a 1950s vibe (the chord progression? the ‘oh baby’?) to ‘Red Herring’ and rebellious, provocative closer ‘Theme Song’ is an explicit one-fingered take on ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’. Middle-age never sounded so youthful.

Like punk that’s fast, loose and fun? ‘Too Fag For Love’ is available to download via Bandcamp.

Middle-Aged Queers can be found on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.