Two Thumbs Down - End All Be All

Goalie Fight played with Two Thumbs Down in D.C. at The Pocket above 7Drum City. I owe them a huge favor for making sure we got paid at the end of the night and were able to afford gas after our North Carolina show fell through (this album review is not that favor).

First and foremost, End All Be All is my gold standard for broke-band DIY album packaging. The cheapest, thinnest jewel case they could find still holds up better on a shelf than many digipaks. The disk may be a burned Memorex, but at least they bothered to write the band name and album name on it. The two-sided insert has all the track names and credit, some cute sketches, and a lovely watercolor cover. I can see the slight wobble on the edges of a pair of scissors cutting out fifty of these so they have something to sell at their shows.

This album is punk rock in the sense that the performers are punks and they are rocking out. It’s melodic, but more in a musical-theatre way than a pop-punk way. It also avoids most of the lyrical pitfalls that could have come with that. It’s wordy, thoughtful, and specific, but never too freewheeling for its own good. Lots of Bomb The Music Industry influence here. Some sax but no keyboards. It occurs to me that Jeff Rosenstock does the same thing for punk rock that Paul McCartney did for late-period Beatles, sneaking “granny music” influences back into a genre that had seemingly outgrown them. There’s plenty of not-quite-skacore on “Vs. the World” and “No Future”, particularly a raucous “DA DA DA DA” gang vocal.

Some albums are the ultimate expression of an artist’s voice, but this one feels more like an advertisement for the live show. Every song on here is fine tuned for audience freakouts, microphone grabs, and singalongs. As they put so succinctly in the opener “Skyline”, “All I wanna do is rip a sick-ass gig again”. The mix is dynamic, but the drums and guitars are playfully trashy when they get loud. The vocals are damn catchy, even if the male vocals are mixed a little quietly. In short - this is oozing with homemade charm, and leaves you wanting more at under 25 minutes. Combat was the DMV DIY band that popped off nationally last year, and I hope these guys are next up.

End All Be All by Two Thumbs Down is a good album, and I like it.