This week's feature and Inventory got me thinking about comebacks. The cyclical nature of pop culture–as wobbly as it is–has been proven time and time again, but that doesn't make it any less weird when a fresh wave of, say, Ned's Atomic Dustbin-inspired bands pop up and take the world by storm. (Sorry, that's just 19-year-old me dreaming.) It also happens to be autumn, when a music critic's fancy turns to year-end best-of lists and all the synchronicities they reveal. Thinking back on 2007, one thing has been overwhelmingly clear: All bands with the word "disco" in their names–Panic! At The Disco, Shitdisco, Simian Mobile Disco–must cease. Now. Please. Digging through the sonic flotsam of '07 has also revealed this random fact: For an underground band that broke up over 20 years ago, Black Flag sure has been on a lot of lips this year.
Of course, Black Flag never really went away. Frontman Henry Rollins remains a strident and visible figure, even though the band's guitar-strangling mastermind Greg Ginn–not counting the occasional, Rollins-free reunion–has mostly kept to himself in recent years. And to this day, a stroll through any skatepark in American will grant at least one glimpse of Black Flag's iconic logo on a deck, a hoodie, or (in the case of the old-timers) a shitty tattoo. But in 2007, Black Flag has made its posthumous presence felt via two wholly different vessels: Punk bands that copy Black Flag and indie bands that cover Black Flag.
The punk category–made up of groups like Sub Pop's Pissed Jeans, Jade Tree's Cloak/Dagger, and Relapse's Coliseum, all of which released killer full-lengths this year–isn't too surprising. While none of the above are blatant Black Flag clones, punk's perpetual slide into the mainstream has prompted more and more bands to revisit the violence, ire, and purity of hardcore's granddaddy. Still, Coliseum has been barfing up sludge for a while now, and every few months brings a new batch of bands that channel Black Flag to some degree–although Cloak/Dagger and Pissed Jeans do so in their own fractured, trashed, adrenaline-soaked ways.
As for indie-rock bands that covered Black Flag in '07, one is a gratingly adorable Welsh ensemble called Los Campesinos! (exclamation theirs). The group's new single is called "The International Tweexcore Underground," and one of the B-side tracks is a lollipop-sweet rendition of Black Flag's acidic, shit-smeared "Police Story." To fully understand the context of this cover, however, let's refer to the single's A-side. In "Tweexcore," one of them cute li'l Campesinos sings–in an echo of Eddie Argos' anti-Velvet Underground rant in Art Brut's "Bang Bang Rock & Roll"–this shocking line: "I never cared about Henry Rollins."
Admittedly, many Black Flag fans never cared about Henry Rollins that much, either. It's tough, though, to tell exactly where Los Campesinos! is coming from. "Tweexcore" appears to present an at least semi-fictional argument between a young hipster couple whose clashing tastes in music have led to much shouting and pouting. (For the record: The male singer digs twee pop like Heavenly, while the female singer rocks old punk like Black Flag.) Just to be cheeky, they throw Black Flag and Heavenly covers on the B-side. Get past the toothache and it's a pretty fun single–and the version of "Police Story" is one that Black Flag (whose rendition of "Louie Louie" was equally as sarcastic and deconstructive) might have even tolerated.