Album Review: The Bouncing Souls - 'Ten Stories High'
They’re back and they’re bringing the entire building down. New Jersey’s own The Bouncing Souls are bringing three decades of homegrown punk all together to the highest of heights.
There has never been a dull day in the New Jersey scene since this frantic four-piece came together, and as the punk scene they grew up in sees a renaissance of sorts around the United States and beyond, they come to re-conquer with their new record Ten Stories High. Following their pre-pandemic reimagination record Volume 2, it’s time for some new grooves and louder than life tunes.
Opening with title track and single ‘Ten Stories High’, the world feels brighter and more hopeful than when their last record hit the airwaves. The harmonious chorus and anthemic nature of the melody make this an instant favourite - which makes its starting point placement all that more relevant. A single that could have been plucked from the group’s golden years and still shine as bright today, there is an ageless element to their sound. Yet this sounds more what the world needs now, than what it needed back in the musically tumultuous 1990s.
The group have used their decades of reckless experience and no-holds-barred perspectives to bring together a different and more relatable record. Being people that weave in real-life stories and anecdotes into two-minute-long sparks of electricity and chaos, it takes hard work and skilful senses to pull off such a craft. With tracks such as ‘Shannon’s Song’ and ‘True Believer Radio’, there are tales to be told within the words and there is no stronger storyteller in this moment than vocalist Greg Attonito and his carefully picked bouquet of lines and phrases.
The best way to talk about events that are hard to word, is through the chords of a guitar and the smash of cymbals. This has always been the universal language of punk, and the vicious vocabulary is only growing.
Closing out on ‘Higher Ground’, after a rollercoaster of ups and downs - bounces, one may say - this is where the record ends but it doesn’t end on a sour note or a bittersweet sequence. Still big, still bad, and still blowing the roof off the house from the basement to the sky. There is something endearing about a long-term music project being able to maintain the same sound, same feel, same energy from the beginning until the very end. With younger artists making it look as easy as riding a bike, there is little appreciation for what older musicians have to catch up with just to tie in the very same footrace. The Bouncing Souls have always kept things tight-knit, cleverly created, and did not compromise who they are or what they stood for throughout their entire career and that is why punk will never die. Punk will never grow tired.
Punk rock will always be unashamed, unapologetic, and unable to slow down or stay put. It will bounce higher, and higher, and higher. Ten stories and beyond.
Words by Jo Cosgrove
