Liquid Mike: Hell Is an Airport

First, I agree that hell is an airport. Second, I don’t love the name of this band — despite it being somewhat close to my heart. Mike Mike motorbike and all that. That is all beside the point, of course. What I can get down with is an album filled with two-minute songs crafted in the most traditional pop punk / power pop tradition. Dudes banging and strumming in the basement or garage in the impromptu studio that makes everything feel somehow sunnier and more organic than the label fodder and over-produced nonsense. It’s not as if DIY doesn’t has its pitfalls, of course, but I can appreciate the joy in just getting together, playing instruments and putting together a record of tunes that remind you somehow of what indie music is supposed to be.

I mention the band American Hi-Fi way more on this site than they deserve to be mentioned. But I’m going to mention them again here. I think this is what that band thought they were. But instead they turned everyone off with their corporate radio-ready version of power pop punk and ended up just bargain-bin regulars instead. Liquid Mike, despite mining similar territory, manages to make catchy tunes, but not caaaatchy tunes that feel as though Max Martin got his hands on them. Not even close, really. Maybe I’d put them in the less punk, less cheeky lane of a MxPx? Which is a band I really only know from one album. I’m somehow getting worse at this comparison cliche. And that’s the thing, I hear a lot of other things in their music that I can’t quite put my finger on. The pop-ish melodies, overdriven wall of guitars and the effects on lead singer Mike Maple’s voice trying to fight its way out of the mix remind me of Copper Blue-era Sugar. But is that really what’s going on with the music? Perhaps. But the first track on the album, “Instantly Wasted,” literally sounds exactly like another song I know. And no matter how many times I run it back, I can’t place it. I know there are only so many chords and so many chord progressions one can play, but dammit if the melody and production isn’t identical to something that’s right on the tip of my… One day it’ll come to me and I’ll be vindicated, but until then it’ll have to live in that alt universe that is my old-man brain.

It’s been a weird couple years for music for me. I keep rolling around to these vaguely alt-country albums and kind of non-traditional sounds for what is typically my taste. I don’t know if it’s me aging or just where music is headed. Hipster Jr., who has listened almost exclusively to rap for the past many years, has even been sucked in by the frat boy Zach Bryan phenomenon. Honestly, that shit still sucks, but it shows a trend, I suppose. So, it’s nice to return to a more traditional sound that isn’t trying too hard to go with the times in any specific way. Nary a singer-songwriter tune or even a post-hardcore (another trend) note to be found. It’s a record that warms my heart, which is a thing that we could use more than ever heading into what will inevitably be another tough year on all of our constitutions and patience.