The Briefs

Platinum Rats (2019)

Daniel James

This new effort by The Briefs is fun and well done. I have to admit I'd almost forgotten them, filing them away in the back of my brain with alot of late 90s/early oughts street punk bands like One Man Army or Madcap that haven't been around in a while. But they made me remember with this. They still sound like a street punk band from that era with punchy Ramones or Dead Boys style choruses and triple chords but better recording. I've been very bored with self isolation and quarantine and been looking over alot of tracks I'd forgotten.

The first and final tracks are Bad Vibrations and Terrible Vibrations, as a bookends of bad to worse. Nazi Disco is a really fast moshable track about I guess fighting Nazis at a show. There isn't a Plyrics for this album so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. GMO Mosquito is a fun song about a mutant mosquito and is one of the most Ramones like tracks on this, a throwback to when every pop punk band tried to sound like them. Underground Dopes is an angrier track about being fed up with the contradictions of underground life. I Hate The World and She's the Rat have some of the catchiest guitar work on the album. The Thought Police Are On The Bus is overall my favorite song on the album but its all quite enjoyable.

This band definitely embraces a retro aesthetic, sounding and dressing like the Buzzcocks or Ramones or Generation X, something fading out of punk recently, but its cool they stick to the roots. They're from Seattle, but for some reason I thought they were from NYC maybe because I used to see their stuff at Generation Records in NYC when I was a teenager. This band should put out more stuff. This release made me glad they're back around wherever and whenever they come from.