Album Review: Starter Jackets – Decisions

Starter Jackets is one of the side projects of Luke McNeill of the Copyrights, the band also features Fred Malcom (Attic Salt / Hospital Job) on drums and Matt Sailor on bass, while Luke McNeill and Lanny Durbin are splitting vocals and guitar duties. Decisions is an album of power pop and punk songs that looks back fondly at dead technology and classic sports team logos, the band are now set to release their new album Decisions on June 29th 2018 via Rad Girlfriend Records. 

 

16 Bit opens things up with a slab of infectious punk rock that looks back to slightly simpler times, this is followed by Only Thing You’re Bad At, a blast of perfect anthemic power pop. Every track on Decisions seems to be a throwback to the late seventies and early eighties heyday of power pop, new wave and punk rock, and as the album is largely looking to the past, even the album sleeve is a nod to the aesthetics of that era, this fits in nicely on an album of nostalgia for things the most of us are glad don’t exist anymore.

 

If you love the Copyrights then Decisions is an album that should be on your shopping list, Starter Jackets have taken their punk rock and blended it with new wave and power pop perfectly. Whilst I will never understand nostalgia for the past, especially when it comes to technology, you don’t have to agree as the music on Decisions is a perfect blend of punks past that you don’t have to be nostalgic to appreciate. Starter Jackets is as good anything that Luke McNeill has created with the Copyrights and I cannot wait to see what his other side project, Hospital Job, has in store for us.

 

You can pre-order Decisions on black and purple vinyl from Rad Girlfriend Records here

 

Decisions will also be available via Starter Jackets Bandcamp here