Photo credit: Meghan Quadracci
Lyric Advisory Board
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, pieces circulated around the internet arguing that his presidency could actually be a boon for punk by helping the genre return to its political roots. The jury is still out on whether punk is actually any better off for his presidency, but there’s no disputing that Trump’s presidency left a mark on music as a whole. Within mere weeks of his inauguration, artists of all stripes responded with songs and albums inspired by his cutthroat policies, treatment of women and outright disregard for marginalized voices. Even hitherto apolitical musicians threw in their two cents.
As a critic I’ve probably heard dozens if not hundreds of musical rebukes to Trump over the last couple of years, some insightful, others shallow, but few are as outright visceral as Lyric Advisory Board’s new The Great American Novelty, a crazed Americana album that captures the Pavlovian sense of revulsion that the mere sound of Trump’s voice inspires for much of the country. Opener “American Carnage” plays like a deranged update of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a profane kiss-off to a profane president. It’s not just angry music—it’s raw and unruly, and it makes no effort to disguise its ugliness.
Band leader Allen Coté, who has performed in some capacity with many of Milwaukee’s most prominent roots-rock bands over the last 15 or so years, describes the record less as a concept album than as a clearinghouse for stray ideas too far-out for his other projects. Several songs are hot off the press; others he sat on for years. “Two in particular, ‘Little Bourgeois Lice’ and ‘Heaven in the Suburbs’ were just such bizarre songs I didn’t know what to do with them,” he says. “They found a home, as it were, in this socio-political framework.”
Politics isn’t Coté’s default songwriting muse. “I feel like for a long time I fell into the trap of a white guy with an acoustic guitar singing love songs, requited or otherwise,” he says. “But for various reasons I just decided that was not something I wanted to do anymore and I felt like I needed to take a different approach. It just so happened that I’ve got a whole lot of anger.”
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And in the Trump era, Coté says, biting his tongue wasn’t an option. “Like most other people I’ve been pretty frustrated, and I just don’t know what to do with those thoughts,” he says. “I felt impotent in so many ways. But I also feel some responsibility as a citizen to speak out. Social media seems pointless; it’s just people screaming at each other and nothing gets done—we’re all vilifying each other without any common ground. I felt like I needed to say something but in a somewhat more abstract way so maybe more people would hear it.”
It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to tour behind an album like this, and having to channel that anger night after night. Asked if he had any reservations dedicating his primary musical outlet of the moment to the same toxic politics that many listeners try to avoid, Coté admits that he did. He’s made a record that’s likely to stress out a lot of listeners.
“Part of the way that we dealt with that is with catchy melodies and toe-tapping beats and that sort of thing—giving people some sugar to take down with the medicine,” Coté says. “And part of it is that I am fortunate enough to make my living from music, but I do it in a number of ways. So I don’t need to please anybody when it comes down to my own albums or performances. These things are for my own edification. So if nobody wants to hear it, it doesn’t matter so long as we’re happy with it.”
Lyric Advisory Board will play an album release show Friday, June 22 at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn with SistaStrings and B~Free and Quinten Farr.
