Bomb the Music Industry!: Vacation

Really Records

Brooklyn punk collective Bomb the Music Industry! is a weird band. Its Wikipedia page lists 20 members, it switches genres midsong, and it once played a song in 23/4 time. But the revolving door of musicians led by Jeff Rosenstock has always balanced its bizarro aesthetic with catchy hooks and solid songwriting, and nothing ever gets too out of hand. So maybe it makes some sort of roundabout sense that the weirdest move BTMI could make on its new record, Vacation, is to scale the insanity back. At first, the album opener, “Campaign for a Better Next Weekend,” sounds positively normal. There’s no hoarse yelling, no 8-bit keyboard lines, just a soft-building piano until the four-minute mark when the song explodes into the same cacophony Rosenstock is known for. Vacation is still a strange ride most of the time, but it’s always a fun one, and that’s what counts. (4 out of 5 stars)