Plow United – Marching Band

After Plow United acquainted a new audience with the fairly comprehensive comeback album, Sleepwalk: A Retrospective, the band set out to record their first new full length since their abrupt breakup in 1998.  And for a band that had been out of commission for thirteen years, the Wilmington, Delaware trio has not missed a beat.  The result is Marching Band, a twelve-track album that not only plays off the band’s brief legacy, but also expands upon their sound for a modern scene.

For starters, the band has tightened up considerably since the sloppy Lookout! Records days.  Without judging the merit of trends from days past, the songs feel far more targeted and focused than anything in the band’s back catalogue.  For starters, songs like “The War Is Over And Our Side Won” and “Act Like It” place a greater emphasis on building up and belting out a slick chorus.  While this might sound counter to Brian McGee’s innate playfulness, his vocals have evolved a hoarser delivery matching his increasingly baritone intonation.  The result makes for bigger, throatier peaks as per the latter half of “Cui Bono?” in which McGee belts pointed questions to the answering response of energize gang vocals.  This is new territory for Plow United and they make it feel like familiar ground.

A lot of thought went into the musical accompaniment, as these songs drop all sorts of musical nuances that reach above your typical pop-punk fare.  For instance, album opener “Human 2000” includes a dash of what sounds to be a flickering mandolin (more likely a guitar played at its highest chords) and the sparing use of orchestral strings closing the album in “Meggers.”  Thoughtful lyrics in the toned down “Falling, Deeply” make for an emotionally in-tune introspection, and the insight of the simile-based “The World Is A Slum’s” clincher, “it’s just as naive to say everyone sucks as it is to think everyone is kind,” should leave listeners with far more to ponder than anything inconsequential pop-punk acts like Man Overboard ever will.

It goes without saying; Plow United is back for all the right reasons.  Armed with songs that can be flatteringly described as big and purposeful, listeners are in for a treat from these old-time punks.  For skeptics of bands returning from the grave: Plow United offers up a comeback album that looks to the future just as much as it does to the past.