Most political punk bands let their politics overwhelm their music. What could begin as an honest effort to inform or pontificate about a particular topic usually winds up as pretentious ranting and raving. Not so with
the Hudson Falcons, a punk rock & roll band that proudly wears its working-class New Jersey origins on its sleeves.
The Falcons play a mix of blue-collar punked-up rock & roll, with influences from Oi! and Irish folk music. The songs chiefly focus on workers' rights, with the opening track ("Working Class War") perfectly setting the tone of the rest of the album, both in political and musical content. The politics of the band can be determined from the song titles alone; besides the opening tracks, other songs are named "Revolution," "Sweatshops," "Pride," "Worker Fate," and "Abandoned Vets." There's even a track ("Free Lori") dedicated to spreading knowledge of Lori Berenson, an American journalist wrongly jailed in Peru.
The crucial fact in all of this is that the music stands on its own. While it might be a vehicle to get the politics across to the listener, each song works as great rock & roll in the style of
the Supersuckers,
the Dropkick Murphys, and
Nine Pound Hammer. No pointless and shoddy three-chord collection of screeching here. This provides the important distinction in
the Hudson Falcons, which hopefully draws some attention to their cause as proof that intelligent and raucous political rock & roll can exist. ~ Jeremy Salmon