CUT UP – ‘I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It’.
CUT UP – San Francisco, California, USA.
For our previous work on the band – Click Here.
Since we last saw San Francisco Cali-Punk exports CUT UP, their second release I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It has made its way to centre stage for another in the way of that wave of revivalist 90’s Punk music so triumphantly returning to said stage, half pipe and house-show.
Lagwagon, No Use For A Name, Dillinger Four and Face To Face all come to mind even before the band’s influences are listed as such. Charged with fast and relentless Skate Punk but with that classic buzzsaw-guitared Pop-Punk edge and heartfelt melodies to boot, the band’s sound on this second release blows their prior work well out of the bay.
\\I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It//
“Make Pop-Punk Punk Again” could be the releases slogan as the opening notes cast the sonic memory back to the genres’ heyday. The relentless percussion and upbeat melodies contrast well with the direct lyricisms with ‘262 18th’ in its entirety laying down the ground work for the next five tracks, with chugging guitars and one-liners for days.
In hindsight however, it’s positioning on the EP should have fallen after the second track, ‘3 Weeks’ which with it’s old-school Melodic Hardcore intro and tenacious pace, stands far more inline with the band’s heavier tendencies. ‘3 Weeks’ marks one of the best of the six in it’s lament to the past and admittance of personal struggle.
‘Low Lives’ is that fast cathartic release the Punks play for the other Punks needing that little push to find their way out. In classic Punk self-deprecation and admittance of such, CUT UP capture the spirit of this music’s purpose towards the disenfranchised in their own cry for help. – ‘Waiting for things to change, but it’s always the same – It’s painful to live this way, when your life means nothing‘.
Banner Pilot are an obvious influence and ‘Life’s A Drag’ could easily sit on Souvenir, but also has a slight nod towards an early Ryan Key Yellowcard, with the band’s Pop-Punk sensibility never far from their appreciation for fast and Melodic Punk-Rock.
‘For You’ and ‘Daybreak’ are re-hashed numbers from 2015 and in their final form sound unambiguously stronger. ‘For You’ is the Pop-Punk gem of the release in it’s 90’s glory and again carries that early Yellowcard flare .
For me personally it’s always been ‘Daybreak’, a track that is the embodiment of saving the best until last. CUT UP opt for another faster number that despite it’s high-pitched soaring guitar-lines is far more raw of a track and really wouldn’t go amiss on a No Use For A Name release.
Perhaps most notable aspect of both ‘Daybreak’ and this release as a whole is that although an obvious amount of hard work has gone into records writing, it’s the bare and honest simplicity and straight-forward sound that are the biggest impact.
I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It in musical terms captures the raw and basic sound that made Punk music so strong in the 90’s and in the decades’ legacy. A sound that cared not for the “that’s not punk – this is punk argument” that sadly and quite bizarrely still plagues much of the conversing on this form of expression today.
CUT UP are proudly wearing their hearts on their sleeves and persisting to wave said appendages proudly in bare expression of such.
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