It is abundantly clear that we live in a time when capitalist vampires roam The Earth and we are told to worship a variety of artificial intelligences that hallucinate without the good grace to have indulged in the consumption of a cocktail of nonprescription drugs. Since we are therefore officially halfway to hell, we might as well fire up a soundtrack from those time honoured miscreants The Dwarves with their album “Jenkem” and thus hope for spiritual enlightenment. And, hopefully, some nonprescription drugs.
There are quite a lot of drug references to be found in this album. Some might even regard that as educational but this is The Dwarves and The Dwarves roll like they always have so, whilst not entirely without sentiment and with an occasional, if rather ironic, take on the mall friendly pop punk sound sneaking in to be used as a counterpoint to their full on, and riff crazy, nihilistic hardcore sound, this album is still likely best seen as the soundtrack to a good time . It is, therefore, perhaps surprising that there is so much actual melody to be found on this album and, despite The Dwarves being a band who would regard a magnum opus as being a song that lasts more than two minutes, it is not difficult to find a song that will stick in your head even if, as a side effect, singing “Adderall is a bad drug” out loud is unlikely to improve your prospects for advancement in the corporate jungle.
Whilst time has mellowed The Dwarves to some small extent, this isn’t the kind of band to start worshipping democracy, or indeed the wife of the head of democracy, and selling out. The American dream may well be dead but The Dwarves will live forever.