Sic Waiting – Anchors Astray

Sic Waiting’s sophomore full length, Anchors Astray, has quick become the unlikely champion of my past review package – but it didn’t start out that way.  As I’ve mentioned before, I always start off a new stack of CDs by ripping them and plunking them down on a continuous playlist.  But as chance would have it, my macbook wasn’t too fond of the disc, and continually ejected Anchors Astray soon after insertion.  Taking a look at the fractured CD case (the entire spine looks to have shattered in transit), and uninspired low resolution photographed album art, I plunked the album down at the back of my desk and promptly forgot about it for the following week.  What a lapse in judgment.

What I thought would be a half hearted, amateurish outing ended up being a remarkably solid addition to what many outside of Eastern Europe consider a dead genre – melodic skate punk.  Even with the year featuring somewhat of a resurgence, Anchors Astray holds strong against a stiff gale of competition.

The album opens with the age-old cry of synced guitars and steady drumming as vocalist Jared Stinson matches his tone with all the passion and precision of genre vets No Use For A Name.  The first track, “A Part Of Everyone’s Disease,” eases listeners in with the comforting familiarity of warmly played three-chord punk with enough speed and precision to keep listeners at their most attentive.  A simple start, yes – but those who think they’ve heard it all before, and that they would better be spent dusting off their copies of Lech Con Carne, need only look to the next track for a reason to stay the course.

In a matter of speaking, the follow-up, “Consumers To The Grave,” opens like a swift boot the face.  From the onset of the track’s metal-tinged riffs, Sic Waiting bares its teeth and snarls away through gutsy chorus, verse, and bridges.  Earlier this year I was impressed by Chaser’s defining album, The Big Picture – in this regard Anchors Astray brings forth a comparatively healthy vigor.

Sic Waiting’s consistency is the result of masterfully layered melodic levels working in tandem towards a unified vision.  One of the strongest examples, “Black Label,” opens at a simple, almost post-punk pace, and revs up about four times before the quartet sets out in full.  The effect is a sense of sustained escalation – each bump being more meaningful than the last.  It’s actually the first of a final trilogy of tracks – all of which end the album on the band’s strongest note thanks to a valley of echoic “woahs” in “Victims” and subtlety complex guitar work defining concluding track “The Price Of A Good Night’s Sleep.”

And lastly, Anchors Astray maintains the tradition of articulate punks shouting for a worthy cause.  Many of these songs scream out for change, setting out events and anecdotes that listeners must confront and grapple with on their own terms.  Topics range from individual struggles to those of a global relevance.  For example, “Sunset on the Moon” predicts future generations evacuating earth for distant colonies to escape government oppression, while “Victims” finds a fallen individual struggling to maintain their own sense of morality in thought provoking lines like “union of blood and alcohol/the sacred vows of vice/being wrong for so damn long starts to feel right.”  In this sense they take a nod from those like Bad Religion, engaging and challenging their audience through concise but wordy phrase.

Sic Waiting won’t change anyone’s mind about today’s dressed up 90’s skate punk revival, but those with a love for melody, politics, and heart pumping tempos shouldn’t miss Anchors Astray.  For all the reasons initially outlined, this is an album that will likely slip between the cracks, a tragic fate for a band contributing to a growing body of work currently reviving a genre that’s been on life support for so long.