Lagwagon

I Think My Older Brother Used To Listen To Lagwagon EP

[3/5]

Self-deprecation aside, Lagwagon have indeed become an “older” band when held to the standards embraced by many young listeners. Though each year’s best albums often come from more seasoned bands, despite a popular obsession with shiny newness-this EP (all 19 minutes of it) struggles to meet Lagwagon’s best, skate-styled efforts. Heck, five of these seven songs are simply electrified versions of tracks from frontman Joey Cape’s solo acoustic record, also arriving this fall. The EP is still superior in many ways to most other punk records, simply for the fact that Cape & Co. always deliver catchy, substantial material with powerfully disquieting lyrics. And there’s no folk, space rock or electro-pop bleeding in from Cape’s other projects (Bad Astronaut, the Playing Favorites, Afterburner). Still, it doesn’t thrash quite like Hoss did in 1995, which is what most Lagwagon fans probably want. (FAT WRECK CHORDS) Ronen Kauffman