Ashtray - The Power of Positive Drinking

Artist: Ashtray

Album: The Power of Positive Drinking

Label: Silver Sproket

In 2008 Leftover Crack's lead singer, "Stza," put out a collaborative side project named The Star Fucking Hipsters. The album, Until We're Dead, debuted to positive but reserved reviews. Many praised how female vocalist Nicol De Gaillo crisp voice nicely rounded out Stza's crusty wails. However, as many critics commented, many of the tracks were hit or miss, and that with a little more editing and trimming the album could have been something really special. Oh well, I guess we'll have to wait a few years for their next album. WRONG. In fact, I barely had to wait a couple months before stumbling upon an album sounding like how Until We're Dead should have.

Based in Santa Rosa, California - geographically opposite from The Hipsters' home base in New York - the band I speak of is Ashtray, and the album is 2009's The Power of Positive Drinking. Ashtray features lead vocalists Dave and Sarah-Jane trading off every few lines and choruses. While immediately comparable to The Hipsters, Dave's voice sounds decidedly more coherent that Ctza's crusty croak, and Sarah-Jane's voice has a rougher quality and higher pitched squeal than with Nicol. Consequently, Dave and Sarah-Jane's voices sound stylistically closer to each other than with Ctza and Nicol, and they just seem to have more "chemistry." Such chemistry results in exchanges and dialogues easily comparable to Minneapolis, Minnesota's Awesome Snakes - a style that sounds like banter between friends, complete with humour and expressivity.

Throughout the record Ashtray plays punk-rock songs about the cornerstones of a traditional "punk" lifestyle. Songs like "Cardboard Dan," a track about a "real" punk who lives by his ideals, describe colourful characters which, based on the fine details, were presumably inspired by scensters encountered by the band. Furthermore, based on their brutal honesty about cramped living conditions, struggling to turn a dime on tour, and having their van breaking down in songs like "Tour Song," Ashtray sings about what they know - no more, no less. But they have a certain humour about it - one in which they ultimately show how much they love their band despite such inconveniences. 

The Song "Favourite Things" fires off the band's favourite things to do - a list of irresponsible, defiant, and juvenile pleasures including, "hanging out with friends with beer and cigarettes and playing video games," "star wars and riding bikes," "Harry Potter and ice cold water, and Operation Ivy songs" - the band even makes another reference to Cardboard Dan. It's a list so obscure and random that I can only imagine Dave sings with complete sincerity when asserting "these are a few of my favourite things."  Since many of these items, particularly bike riding and Cardboard Dan, reoccur throughout the album, "Favourite Things" serve's as the album's thematic glue.

One of their most endearing songs, "Back in the Day," attempts to refute the age old complaint that "new" punk could never aspire to the highs of "old" punk.  The band compares references to the glory days of Husker Du and Operation Ivy in the 80's with Green Day and Rancid in 1994 - the year typically cited as "the year punk rock sold out."  Because "Back in the Day" is one of the last songs on the album, the listener already knows about the band's rough lifestyle.  Thus, when a band as honest and sincere as Ashtray asserts that punk is alive and well, I find myself inclined to believe them - compared to when multi-platinum Hot Topic branded acts like Fall Out Boy speak for the genre.

I can't think of a better way to kick off the new year than by picking up Ashtray's The Power of Positive Drinking.  The album should reassure punkrock fans that despite the continually popularizing face of punk, 2009 has the potential to deliver the goods.