Boss Tuneage have helped put out this retrospective compilation spanning the Hard Ons entire career. Which seems, from I can work out, to actually be 27 years. Still, poor mathematics on my part (or their part – I can’t quite decide) aside, this a lengthy discourse involving a whole plethora of different sounds the band have had, all nicely stuck together on one CD.
My issue with compilations like this is that they usually don’t do the band a lot of justice. Too many eras put together awkwardly on one album. This isn’t especially an exception, although you can kind of group the tracks into 3 fairly distinct eras. The first lot of tunes are pretty much Ramones-worship stuff. It’s an interesting piece of history, but I think mostly fairly average imitations of better tunes by earlier bands. The middle stuff is much more entertaining. Some of the songs are quite similar to Descendents’ stuff after ‘Milo…’ but before ‘Everything Sucks’ – a lot of reverb, atmospheric noise, new wave influence. The last few tunes on here are more a distinctive, original sound (if anything can ever be called that) – and all I can say is that more recent Hard Ons stuff sounds a bit like what the Smashing Pumpkins would produce if they played pop-punk. Strange, but very cool.
The band have clearly never given much thought to making profound lyrical epics, but this is a lovely history lesson. It’s just a bit disjointed to be enjoyed in one sitting. Still, a great backup to the band’s 6 week epic Europe tour they are doing at the moment.
Mike