Middle-Aged Queers – Greatest Hits

We’ve all been at that party. The band that you left ten years ago are all there. There are a few guitars lying about. Someone bullies you into playing a few songs together. But not the songs you wrote together. That would be too painful. ‘Apart from that, what do you all know?’ someone asks. Turns out you all know a bunch of different stuff. Odd stuff. Songs you would never play seriously. This album of, let’s say an eclectic selection of music, is that. 

Middle-Aged Queers describe themselves rather grandiosely as a Bay Area supergroup, comprising ex-members of The Cost, Fang, The Insaints, and The Shondes. Their self-stated mission is ‘to make punk rock gay again’. From this and from the rather promiscuous selectivity of their song choices, you can safely assume that the band are not being entirely serious here. Or are they? Strong with the gay force the album certainly is, veering wildly from icon (Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero) to filth (Dr Know – Fist Fuck). And then there’s Spongebob Square Pants. Yes, the incomprehensible bad trip animated series theme. There is a grinding version of Faith No More‘s We Care A Lot that adds a quite unnecessary layer of musical menace and lyrical updating to the throbbing original.

Unnecessary is a key concept here. The band themselves describe this album as ‘a wholly unnecessary move’, which only makes you love them a bit more. The band have put these songs into a meat grinder to force out short and quite brutal facsimiles of the originals. Affectionate? Maybe, Easy listening? Definitely not. I’m thinking Middle-Aged Queers don’t care what I think. This is a kind of painful fun. An utterly pointless record full of WTF moments. Rollicking punk rock in the true spirit of the original with a double side of tongue in cheek humour.

Best moments? The aforementioned Anti-Hero is a surprise but the amped-up full-tilt version of Mazzy Star‘s rather wistful dreampop waltz Fade Into You wins the prize for me. Enjoy this album for what it is and celebrate that it exists at all. If it didn’t exist, your life would not be diminished in any way.  Greatest Hits they may be in name only, but uniquely realised and, in their own way, utterly charming.

Greatest Hits is now available through streaming platforms and Bandcamp and on vinyl through Sell The Heart Records (US) & Engineer Records (UK). Middle-Aged Queers will be on tour across North America across the Spring & Summer, including appearances at Montreal’s Pouzza Fest and California’s Recess Romp.