Verböten by Verböten
Verböten doesn’t have a huge legacy to live down or live up to: the Evanston, Illinois punk quartet formed in 1982, when no member was over 14 years old, and broke up roughly a year and a half later. Only one member, Jason Narducy, continued a career in music.
Narducy has been a touring bassist for Superchunk, a touring and studio bassist for Bob Mould, and frontman for the estimable Split Single. The self-titled Verböten debut album reflects his experience: he produces, plays guitar, sings, and writes the songs, including two co-written with bassist Chris Kean.
Yet Verböten also reflects the enthusiasm of the other three players, including Kean (a public school teacher), vocalist Tracey Bradford (a hospice nurse) and drummer John Carroll (a band teacher in Evanston, and a replacement approved by original drummer Zack Kantor). They’re resuming artistic conversations they didn’t realize had left so much unsaid.
Reconnecting with each other, the members of Verböten also reconnect with the low-budget, high-octane (and often high-velocity) noise that inspired them. “No More Indecision” starts this album with the anger, brevity, and determination of Bad Religion, and “Bodily Autonomy” follows with endlessly ringing guitars, an incessant boots-march beat and a call to action.
From track to track, Verböten displays focus as sharp as a Kubrick close-up: in “Dark Things,” Bradford dispenses shiveringly cool threats before the chorus explodes; “Radiate” twists Stooges-simple chords around a ska-neighborhood gallop; and “Better Life” adds pan-pipe and plastic-classical synth notes to poppy hooks the band might not have been able to think of four decades ago.
The album ends with “Conviction of Youth,” framed as a remembrance of the band’s “furious glare” and “raging fear” back in the 1980s, but delivered with urgency that is absolutely in the present. The loud, insistent, melodic conversation continues.
