The Toasters – Hard Band for Dead
welcome back to the Skaject folks! our album this week is 1996’s Hard Band For Dead, from the Toasters!
The Toasters’ Hard Band For Dead is an album very concerned with Ska legacy and the Toasters’ place in it – the title comes from an old Prince Buster single (from the album here), which they cover here on the record, tracks like the opener 2-Tone Army talk about the culture, and Chuck Berry recounts a history of the genre while Skaternity looks to the ska future. and like, that makes sense – they’d been around for 15 years at this point, and had gone through many lineup changes and “periods” as a band, and they even loop back around and play a blisteringly fun cover of one of their first singles, Talk Is Cheap here. if any American ska band has a place taking this kinda nostalgic position, the Toasters for sure fit.
while tracks like Properly or Speak Your Mind are also focused on culture at large, there’s plenty of lighter or funner tracks here too. i also really like their cover of Johnny Rivers’ Secret Agent Man. something about ska bands and spy music. its a good fit. plus, theyve got some really neat instrumental tracks here – Mouse is just an absolutely groovy delight, they continue the spy theme covering the Get Smart theme in Maxwell Smart, and the closer Dave Goes Crazy is a fantastic way to bring everything to a close. Don’t Come Running is another really neat track – the chorus here absolutely knocks you flat, with the horn hooks as just some delicious icing on the cake.
on the whole, really fun, really neat record! ive been loving whenever the Toasters come up, and this album is no exception.
faves – 2-Tone Army, Talk is Cheap, Secret Agent Man, Chuck Berry, Mouse, Dave Goes Crazy
dislikes –
Hard Band For Dead – 8/10
next week, we’ll check out Buck-O-Nine’s Water In My Head!
previous: Moving On | next: Water In My Head
previous Toasters release: Dub 56 | next: Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down
Discussion ¬