Plök, You Tie a Rock to Your Leg Cuz it Fits You

Three piece Danish neo-Punk outfit Plök’s first American release, You Tie a Rock to Your Leg Cuz it Fits You, sounds familiar. “Familiar” in that it sounds derivative. “Derivative” in that it sounds stolen. Stolen from something circa Warped Tour 2002. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a pleasure in derivation, and it’s easy to recognize the appeal of such a band. Their beats are easy to follow, their lyrics beautifully meaningless — but in the roughly 30 minutes it took to get through this six-song EP, I could’ve eaten dinner, or read the newspaper, or walked the dog. It simply doesn’t grab hold of the listener.

A live Plök show might consist of something like a few dozen teenagers moshing for the sake of moshing, like that time they saw their big brother moshing to Alice in Chains and thought it looked cool so why not? And there’s something to be said for that. Plök is a fun band, they have quirky lyrics, and they most certainly have a straight-edgy hard-core-y kind of charm. Plök sounds a bit like Limp Bizkit sounded the first time you heard them on MTV’s Spring Break. The band’s interesting in the way that story you read about that car crashing into a Denny’s somewhere in Ohio (or was it Wisconsin?) at three in the morning is interesting — interesting in their forgettableness. Music that can be forgotten is adored in some circles, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I assume that Plök has a method to making this kind of music, and I’ll go with it.

Plök’s official press release sells them as a band that leads their audience through a “full set of un-punked polka,” but that’s not the entire story. Yes, they could most likely be classified in the genre of 21st-century punk music, though there is no clear understanding of what that actually means. If it means they are loud, then Plök is clearly punk. If it means that their songs are consciously void of substantive lyrics — check. If it means they sound like most and/or all of their influences — I want to say the Minutemen, but that might be pushing it; let’s say the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Henry Rollins minus tattoos on lead vocals — Plök is punk. Not big-“P” punk, of course, but small-“p” punk. I have no problem lumping them in with other small-“p” punk bands like Anti-Flag and perhaps even Panic! at the Disco, but to call them “Punk” would be a misnomer. They are something, but it’s not that.

No official word yet if Plök was named after the popular 1993 (not so much fun) Super Nintendo game “Plok,” but I’ll say this — the band and game are quite similar in their methodologies. In the end, things end up dying.