Bad Mary Better(er) Days

You don’t need to know that the songs on this EP are 2024 reboots of tunes from Long Island glam punks Bad Mary‘s Better Days album from fully ten years ago. You don’t need to know this because the songs re-presented for our listening pleasure here are still fresh and vital and, better yet, brought artfully into the 2020s through being re-recorded with guitarist Dave Henderson firmly in control behind the desk. The process has made this six-track EP sound super-contemporary: The Bad Mary vibe is fun, feisty and in your face, and these are six tracks of prime dayglo street punk with buckets of attitude. What is evident from this EP is Bad Mary’s astonishing level of musicality – these re-recordings really highlight their artistry and musical nous.

Kicking off with the rollicking Losing Control, the band power through Hangover, which is a howling celebration of the joys of alcoholic refreshment in the right company. This is closely followed by the galloping title track Better Days and the frantic, battering Don’t Know Where The Line Is, the accompanying video for which intercuts the original shoot with new video to neatly and visually encapsulate the methodology behind this EP: then v now, both good, both the same but different, Forget About It is full-on punk pop with an oddly intimate passage. The EP closes with Ninja, which is a stomping slab of street punk and a fitting bookend to this instalment of the Bad Mary story.

Bad Mary are a band completely at home in their own skins and are beholden to no-one. Their confidence in the material is self-evident – not that they need approbation or licence to do what they do. Revisiting the back catalogue is a bold move that has totally paid off and this EP stands alone as a confident statement of their standing as a band. We like this very much.

Better(er) Days is now available here