Dillinger Four, Civil War

Minneapolis punk band Dillinger Four finally returns with their fourth album. Civil War is another slice of their Hüsker Dü-meets-Southern Califoria sound. If anyone was worried about the band’s six-year break between albums, never fear — Civil War shows them in fine form. It’s packed with lots of great songs and energetic backing from the band.

“A Jingle for the Product,” a depiction of life as a punk rocker, features a great melody with a cool call-and-response thing between the melody and guitars and with just enough harmonies to build the choruses up to a fevered intensity. “Minimum Wage is a Gateway Drug,” about the fact that how minimum wage isn’t enough to live on, is a fast rocker with a cool droning guitar riff, cunningly deployed harmonies during the verses, and a big anthemic chorus. “AMERICASPREMIEREFAITHBASEDORGANIZATION,” a punk lifer anthem, is another fast song with powerful drumming, efficient guitar riffing, and perfect backup vocals in the chorus.

Their sense of humor has survived, as well. They’ve always had a knack for great song titles, like “Minimum Wage is a Gateway Drug,” “parishiltonisametaphor,” and “Ode to the North American Snake Oil Distributor.” In “Fruity Pebbles,” an ode to a missing friend, their dark humor shows: “Fuck this, sick of thinking / Right now it’s time for drinking / Yeah, I know you’ve heard that rhyme before / I don’t care….” Later on they sing, “Now I curse the incidental / That turns so sentimetal / As I hum my little tune to the night.” So many things in life start out incidental and become significant later on, too.

Dillinger Four has always been good at really catchy melodies — these guys might be partly to blame for emo, but we shouldn’t really hold that against them. At long last, they’ve done it again: another great album. Hopefully it won’t take them another six years to put out the next one.