Priests New Album Is An Annoying Fast Casual #newDC Protest Album…

Which means it isn’t actually a protest album at all…

As a resident of Washington, DC the last ten days have solidly sucked. I’ve seen people in red ball caps, pink pussy hats, black hoodies, and pro-life Christian church t-shirts marching, protesting, breaking shit and generally acting reactive in the face of our now-arrived totalitarian regime. In the midst of all of this hubub, Priests, a band that a lot of my friends adore but that I maybe mildly appreciate, apparently — according to well, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and the Washington City Paper — released Nothing Feels Natural, an epic pop-punk protest album that’s apparently going to stand up in the face of the orange glow of doom that’s overtaken the Nation’s Capital. Unfortunately, they’ve got this album all wrong.

To twist a lyric from Baltimore club legend Rod Lee, there’s those who believe that this Priests album is meant for us to all “rage our pain away.” However, no matter how much this album makes us rage in the ways that we have so far in the streets, we’ve still “got problems.” Moreover, if you really realize what’s happening in America, these likely too fast and too casual protests and this too fast and too casually crowned as “best protest album” aren’t actually solving fighting a totalitarian American regime that’s hellbent on winning. No matter how catchy “Nothing Feels Natural” and nine other new Priests songs might sound, there’s probably better records out there to agitate ourselves to the “more substantive than we’re all probably realizing” action required to save liberal democracy in the United States.

This album arrives in a Washington, DC where, in all actuality, the most radical “punk” situation this album will soundtrack is deciding whether to afford a fast-casual assembly-line made sushi burrito for lunch when the line at the assembly-line pizza, Latino-esque burrito, or Mediterranean-esque salad bowl establishment is just too long. Pink pussy hats happened for one day. $13 salads? They happen EVERY day. In the lives of a band that’s first a group of DC residents before they’re people standing down totalitarian power, this is an important thing to stop and consider.

This is a city as much overwhelmed by over-commercialization as it is by Donald Trump and his cabal moving into office buildings. Hence, this Priests album comes at a time wherein I’m certain that Katie Alice Greer, Daniele Daniele, Taylor Mulitz and G.L. Jaguar are as much thinking about politics as they are moreso really wanting to afford these high ass rents and still eat a artisanal, hand-crafted submarine sandwich, drink some good whiskey, have a Michelin-rated Asian meal, and all of the things we do for fun these days in the Nation’s Capital. Thus, when I think this album sounds less like a “protest album” and more like a really good copy of Fever To Tell, the similarly lauded as “instant classic”-as-debut album that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made as a pop reaction to living in a similarly gentrifying and priced-out Brooklyn in 2004? Well, it all makes sense.

This isn’t the old DC anymore, that city that was anywhere from 50%-70% African-American, experiencing 400 plus murders a year, and facing undeniable downtown urban decay. Thus, the idea of anyone praising this album as anything more than “really good music” is absolutely insane. This isn’t “punk,” this is pop. This is a record that, given that it was written in 2013 and recorded in 2015–2016 definitely sounds like what happens when you’re more facing the existentialist crisis of being an artist being evicted or a musician hating their 9–5 life than any sort of “fuck Donald Trump” thing. Giving this album the credit of feeling like “fighting fascism on their own terms” feels just as fast, casual, and in fashion as liberal women angry that Hillary didn’t make 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into the “Pink White House” finding the first pink hats they could find that looked like a uterus to protest the “Pussy Grabber”-in-Chief.

There’s a totalitarian regime taking hold of America. Merriam-Webster defines “totalitarian” as “centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.” There’s no democracy or even fascism at play here. It’s worse than that. This is anti-politics, a thing that is so reductive and controlling that it laughs in the face of protests and steamrolls public opinion with nary a care in the world. In under 10 days, we’ve seen the rights of women, Native Americans, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, the barely insured, and government agencies, and likely many more viciously swept away with the ink of a pen or an itchy Twitter finger.

For as much as I love love love Katie Alice Greer’s lead vocal evoking every bit of Siouxie and the Banshees, I’ve heard that song before, and my forebears used it to fight Ronald Reagan. Rushing to crown the same music that didn’t “defeat” Reganomics as protest music is too fast and casual a move in the face of the Orange World Order. Waiting to find a more stark, powerful, and substantive soundtrack to blast every day as we march through the streets than this one to stand up to a conservative bulldozer that feels approximately one million times more powerful than anything that happened 40 years ago feels like a far more fruitful and intelligent idea.

Antithetical and anti-ethical times require anti-septic anti-music as a revolutionary call to our most powerful arms. Priests’ Nothing Feels Natural is really good music made by really good musicians trying to make a good living making music they love by a standard that really good music has been made for nearly a half-century. By comparison, Donald Trump is a wealthy totalitarian dictator giving zero fucks and succeeding at destroying the traditions and order that have defined this country’s existence for 250 years.

Again, crowning this album as a protest magnum opus is too much, too fast, too casually, and too soon. When you step back for a moment and consider the full effect of the times, the places, and the spaces it occupies, it says so much less about protest, and so much more about what very good musicians do when the price of rent becomes too damned high.

In final, here’s “For Doz That Slept,” from rap duo Black Sheep’s “instant classic” 1991 debut album A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing. Deconstructing caustic chanteuse Millie Jackson’s 1979 “Fuck You Symphony” into a manic break-beat breakdown, it, and not this Priests album, is *actually* the song we need right now.

If we don’t smartly fight the best fight then we’re not fighting at all.

Thanks for reading.