It's the type of music that you can really embarrass yourself with if you're not careful. You get so wrapped up in the songs, that you can find yourself all of a sudden singing along at the top of your lungs with a chorus or standing in the aisles of the grocery store pogoing while looking at the selection of cat treats. First things first; if you've not heard them before and you've come to State Radio looking for Dispatch, well you're not going to find it here. Sure there are similarities, Chad wrote songs for both groups after all, but there's an edginess about the content and the presentation that I hadn't felt from Dispatch's music. While there was always some sort of social content in the earlier band's work, there was a lightness of tone that allowed for a wider audience appeal. There's no way that anybody with any sympathies to the current administration is going to be able to listen to Year Of The Crow without having their beliefs called into question. Whether it's the condemnation of the whole Bush clan from grandpa down (he stole Geronimo's skull from its burial ground so he could use it in some fraternity initiation at Yale) in "Guantanamo", their homage to Dick Cheney's Halliburton war profiteering in "Gang Of Thieves", or their tribute to the fine work the CIA do to this day in destabilizing governments in South America on the song "CIA". State Radio is far more reminiscent of the politicalized music of The Clash and similar bands of the late seventies and early eighties when they show this side. References to the Weather Underground in "Gang Of Thieves" makes it clear they also know that it takes more than platitudes to change the way things work. They're not advocating violence or anything like that (calm down Homeland Security) but they are saying there's nothing wrong with openly resisting what's going on in Washington right now.Now, I don't want to give the impression that they're a one note band, they can tone down the anger and sing with compassion as well. "Bemjamin Darling Part 1" is a wonderful recounting of how the first black man in Maine came to be freed and settle his own plot of land, and "Fight No More" is a moving recounting of Thunder In The Mountain's (Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce) long retreat in the face of broken treaties and the government's policy of exterminating the wild horses the tribe depended on for survival. I defy anyone to listen to "Sudan" and not be moved by the narrator's wish "for guns to all turn to sand and leave the Sudan" The song that touched me the most was "As With Gladness". Chad describes it in press notes as Mother Earth regretting ever letting man have anything to do with the planet. For me what it did was encapsulate the frustration I feel at how we continue to believe that there's nothing wrong with the way we treat the planet as if it were an both a garbage disposal and an unending supply of goodies. Musically State Radio plays appropriately to their lyrics and they use style changes to emphasis different moods and attitudes. The result is that a song can start out hard driving and fierce and then modulate down in order to ensure we're playing close attention to a particular lyric, and then pick up steam again to increase a song's emotional edge. State Radio and Year Of The Crow is not going to be to everyone's taste, especially people who don't want to face up to some of the more unpleasant realities of the world that we live in. They aren't going to make friends among the neo-cons either for that matter, but I don't think they're going to be too chuffed by that. State Radio has something to say, and those willing to listen can expect some of the most passionately honest music since the Clash. These guys could very well be the next "only band that matters".
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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