Singles. Period.
Label: Touch & Go
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Singles. Period.
If someone ever wants to start a fight with me, the quickest way would be to question my contention that The Ex are one of the 10 best bands to ever stalk the planet. Listening to this 23-track collection spanning “The Vinyl Years 1980-1990” you can hear all the tightly wound leftist rage and spitfire idealism that always seemed so inchoate in other punk bands come to a perfect and powerful point. The fact that The Ex only became progressively more politically arch and musically daring, rather than following the reverse course that so many of their peers took, further serves this point. These singles are all brutal angles and raw rage, capturing the earliest morphings of the group’s sound, and honestly, if someone doesn’t think “Stupid Americans” is the least obvious punk song ever or that “Gonna Rob the Spermbank” isn’t the most revolutionary, then the only way this CD is going to help them is by me hitting them in the face with it.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.