Dayglo Abortions Teaser: a Hate Speech review and hints of a Murray Acton interview

Dayglo Abortions at the SBC, 2019, photo by Bob Hanham, not to be reused without permission

So COVID knocked me for a loop. I basically lost the month of May, in terms of serious project work; I had already had a backlog, and then... argh. Now my backlog has a backlog, and I'm playing catchup...

...the biggest part of which, at the moment, is trying to transcribe Murray Acton of the Dayglo Abortions. I'm just over 30 minutes into it, but it's a two hour interview, and Murray talks fast. He's actually got a great voice for radio or podcasts, and often seems very well-informed - I haven't fact-checked everything, and there are a few things I might have challenged Murray on if the point was to have an argument, not an interview... but the Cretin is no cretin, I tellya, and these days, as a songwriter, seems to be miles away from the fella who wrote "Dogfarts," "Stupid Songs" and "Fuck My Shit Stinks" (which I guess some could argue is about not obsessing over problems miles from home, when your own country has plenty of flaws - "Canada's shit stinks, too" - except with references in the lyrics to a diet of beer and tacos, it does seem to be his own literal shit that Murray is singing about, coming from Murray's literal ass, and not, uh, figurative/ metaphoric shit, coming from, say, Ottawa). 

So he's come a long way, maybe. If once it pleased him to deliberately give voice to his inner moron, even if he was doing so sarcastically or with his tongue rammed deep in his cheek, nearly every song on Hate Speech, the newest Dayglo Abortions album, is loaded with political meaning, with targets ranging from white privilege ("White People") to Christianity ("an institution of social control built on hypocrisy that has been a haven for murderers and child molesters since its beginning") to, perhaps a bit more controversially, the self-righteousness of so-called Social Justice Warriors ("Raised on Chest Milk," which he writes on his bandcamp is "about the rise of groupthink and the seeming inability or unwillingness of people to think for themselves.")

And though there are a few songs on the album not overtly about political topics, like "What's for Breakfast Mom?" about the plight of parents with opioid-addicted children, they're still intense, provocative affairs, with a very dark and distinctive sense of humour.  My favourite personal-is-political tune on the album is probably "Smart Food," which, with Swiftian savagery, proposes cannibalizing children, frying their brains in butter as an alternative to the pain we cause factory-farmed animals (Murray does eat meat, but seems at the least conflicted about it). And the whole album is offered with dark humour, hyperbolic violence, and that other trademark of the Dayglo Abortions: circumlocutious, brain-tingling guitar solos from Acton, with occasional counterpoint from former Dayglos like Mike Jak (who takes a solo on "Sacks of Meat;" another alum, Scott Henderson, also pops up on bass on a couple of songs). Since the Dayglos stripped down to a three-piece, awhile ago - Murray, Blind Marc, and Matt Fiorito are the lineup tomorrow - fans of guitar interplay may have missed that element of their live shows, but it is still a factor on the album, which - with apologies to fans of the Gymbo years, or Holy Shiite, or The Armageddon Survival Guide, is my favourite Dayglo Abortions album since Here Today, Guano Tomorrow. 

Hey, Murray, want a pull quote? Here's a thumbnail review: "Hate Speech is the funniest, sharpest, most punk rock album the Dayglo Abortions have unleashed since 1987's Here Today, Guano Tomorrow, and is every bit as flat-out rude and over-the-top entertaining to listen to as that album, while being leagues more grown-up and thought-provoking in its lyrics. In fact, song-for-song, Hate Speech boasts the most interesting social and political commentaries of any of their albums, as well as having their funniest album cover since Two Dogs Fucking and dizzyingly delightful solos around every corner, which will make it no surprise to learn that bandleader Murray Acton is a big Frank Zappa fan. If Murray's punk rock sobriquet, the Cretin, might once have suggested that he was shy about letting the world know just how smart he is, the COVID crisis seems to have taken care of that for once and for all, with Murray revealing himself to be in the same league of punk pundits like Jello Biafra. Highly recommended, even if you didn't LIKE those early, 'classic' Dayglos offerings. This is something else - something better. Shit, it may even be the best thing they've done."

Actually Here Today is the best thing they've done, of course - I'm fudging it a bit; never trust a reviewer who uses words like "may be," which are deliberate plants to give them room to wriggle out later. But Hate Speech is a strong contender for second (or maybe third, after Feed Us a Fetus; you can't knock the classics). 

And speaking of songwriting, that topic itself came up in the interview, with Murray advising budding songwriters to "keep the point simple."

 If you want to say something with the song, if you want a piece of information to be transmitted, make it really obvious, don’t be fuckin’ around and hiding it behind a bunch of weird riffs, keep it right on the straight-up and just put the thing there on a platter, so it’s just “blaaat” – so they don’t have to do an interpretation of metaphors and all of this.

I mean, you can do that too, sure, it’s funny, you’ll hide stuff in there. But mostly, just get the point right on the thing like that, and blammo. It’s a super-powerful way to transfer information to people. Because when you’re telling people certain things, and you start infringing on their belief systems, like, “I don’t think this whole transgender thing is…” If you start a conversation with a social justice warrior-type like that, it’s a fight; they have a mental breakdown, they’re screaming at you and shit. So you don’t! You don’t start it like that. You validate their beliefs, right away, and come up and get things goin’ really nice: play them a bit of music, la-la-la, look, it’s groovy, melodic, everyone’s rockin’, your friends are rockin’, and now that everything is relaxed and all the walls are down, all of a sudden, like a vat, you start pouring in all of this [he leaves the thought unfinished - all of this WHAT? - but it's something like, "evil shit"]: Mwah-ha-ha, like mind-control. It’s exactly what the television and what everybody’s been doing to us forever, so why not?

And humour helps with that?

Oh yeah. Standup comics are the perfect example; the best platform for the delivery of politics is the standup comedian. And if you look at them, they give you about the most accurate idea of what’s going on, too. Because the reason that they’re talking politics is that they’re concerned about something, and they’ve done some research, they’ve looked at things and they might not be right, but quite often they have a pretty good handle, they’ve checked out their sources, they’re working it into their humour, and quite often, they’re more accurate than the news is. The news you can’t believe a word of it, not anymore.

...but smart guy or not (Machiavellian manipulator or not?), it's still not an easy interview to transcribe, as Murray is also one of these people whose mind is always leaping ahead of what he's just said, who says something and then goes back and modifies it or amends it, and in so doing is reminded of something else he thinks, so he zips off on tangents every which way. It's hard to keep up, in conversation, hard to transcribe, and harder still to streamline the finished piece into a nice linear topic-by-topic structure.

For example, one minute we're talking about his favourite comedians (Murray is a big Jimmy Dore fan), which segues into Murray talking about the alleged Syrian sarin attack and Max Blumenthal, which segues into Murray talking about Qaddafi and how the US hates non-compliant nationalists, which quickly turns into commentary on the plight of the Kurds, whom Qaddafi persecuted ("I don't know what everyone's got against the Kurds," Acton observes). This in turn reminds Acton of how the Kurds "kicked ass on ISIS... they found out the guys who want to be martyred believe that if you get killed by a woman, it’s all cancelled [=all the promises of glory in the afterlife]. If you get killed by a useless woman, you’re not a fucking hero, you go to hell. So the fuckin’ Kurds sent out a platoon of women against them, and they dropped their guns and ran for it!" All of which - Dore, Blumenthal, Syria, Libya, and the Kurds - comes in the course of the answer to one question, "Where do you get your news?" 

Murray Acton and Blind Marc by Bob Hanham

So, uh, it's a jam-packed conversation, which you're going to get to read someday, but not before Tuesday's show at the Rickshaw, where the Dayglo Abortions headline, with Car 87 and Calgary hardcore band Citizen Rage opening. Again, THE NEW DAYGLOS ALBUM IS THE BEST NEW PUNK ALBUM I'VE BOUGHT SINCE... what? Probably Alien Boys Night Danger, in 2019. I actually kinda like some things about Hate Speech better than that album, too, like Murray's giddy, gleeful solos - Erin is one of my favourite players in Vancouver, but she's more Angus than Zappa, y'know? Maybe I've missed out on some great stuff, but in recent years, I've poked my nose into releases by Amyl and the Sniffers, Chubby and the Gang, Viagra Boys, Sleaford Mods, Idles, Turnstile and others, in the hopes of finding new punk I really care about, and I haven't kept one of them (or in the case of stuff I've streamed or downloaded, just didn't pursue it). I've been listening to a bit of Vic Bondi stuff, and really respect how much energy Dead Ending and Redshift bring to their music, but with a few exceptions ("Ivanka Wants Her Orange Back"), even their stuff just isn't as catchy of fun to listen to as Hate Speech. so... 

I suspect that I might be a bit closer to Vic Bondi in my politics, mind you - every now and then Murray said things that raised my eyebrows, when we talked COVID, for example, or Barack Obama, who gets namechecked in "Sociopath," despite having been out of office since 2016. Acton on Obama (also skewered on the previous Dayglos album as "The New Black"):

I’d love to hang out with Obama. I bet he’s awesome company, he’s witty and funny and incredibly charming. And just bought. His soul is so owned by the fuckin’ people that put him in power. Like, he was groomed for the job. It goes to show you how real the American election system is. After two Bush presidencies in a row, and the fuckin’ Iraq wars, they were starting to think, “Jesus, we might just be the bad guys, here.” No, no, we’ll give you a saviour, a black guy, a super-charming black guy, and it’s like [gasps in orgasmic relief]. The best one was, in his first inauguration speech, he said, “I hear it’s rumoured that I come from Bethlehem” or something like this. “No—I’m from Krypton.” And I’m just like, "Whoa, this motherfucker is a total sociopath: Look at me, how charming I am.” He’s like a narcissistic psychopath... a machine of success in this world. He’s ruthless, with a beautiful smile, like the fuckin’ antichrist, for chrissake. I saw right through it. He’s not a black guy. What he is, is he’s a real nice happy smiling face on a multi-death corporation, on the whole weapons industry. And look at what he did? Holy fuck, he upped the ante on the war shit, he started really pummeling everybody. They were in nine countries or something like this, dropping more bombs than you could count...

...all of which may be spot on, but it still seems an odd level of vitriol to be directed at the person who seems the least overtly evil American president between the years 2001 (when George W. Bush got in) and 2016 (when Donald Trump was voted out). Does evil that successfully camouflages itself piss Acton off more than evil that's right out there on the surface of things? I don't know, and I'm not going to be able to answer that question before the show.

But whether you agree with everything Murray says or not - that really should not be a prerequisite for checking the band out (see above, re: "groupthink"). Investigate for yourself: go spend time on Murray Acton's bandcamp, and listen to Hate Speech in its entirety (it's all there, for free, with his "liner notes" for each song). If there's a better, more vital, funnier, catchier punk album that's been made in the last few years, I've missed it - in terms of Canadian political punk, Hate Speech is right up there with the very finest works of the Rebel Spell, the Subhumans and DOA, and funnier by a long shot.  

And you have a chance to see them at the Rickshaw, tomorrow! Headlining! Which may not happen again anytime soon. MORE TO COME (eventually!).