Members of The Taxpayers and Transient have come together to create Portland's own Shitty Weekend. The band's debut album, Shit Week, is quite possibly one of the most original and unique-sounding albums of the year so far. Not only does the band consist of the usual guitars, bass, and drums, but it also has a trumpet, a piano, and a tenor and baritone saxophone. It's hard to classify this album though. Shit Week consists of twelve tracks that range vastly between different punk subgenres. Songs like "Employee of the Month" and " Gone Fishin'" seem to be more hardcore, while songs like "Throw Me in the Mud" and "Oh Dear" fall more into the folk punk category. All of the other songs seem to lie somewhere in between. The vocals are very well balanced throughout the whole album. They have a lot of angst in some songs and then they are loud, mean, sharp and aggressive in others. Frontman, or as the band likes to call him, "frontdude" Andrew Link sings with an incredible sarcastic tone and complete disregard about what anyone thinks of his very harsh sounding style. That attitude is mixed together with some wicked humor in the lyrics. One of the best songs on the album that exemplifies this is called "Don't Tell Me Don't." The lyrics start out with: "Eat rocks Mom and Dad!/(very loud scream)/Don't tell me don't!/Cause I Won't!" Shitty Weekend truly makes writing random and odd lyrics an art form. What comes to mind when listening to this album is Andrew Jackson Jihad. Shit Week is sort of similar to AJJ's Can't Maintain era, but with a lot more of a hardcore influence (the band that comes to mind is OFF!), which are really great aspects of this album. Shit Week is a very DIY album that should very refreshing for the scene this year. The band in general is a breath of fresh air. Note to my fellow vinyl nerds: This album was pressed on a total 500 copies of vinyl. 250 copies come in randomly mixed colors and the other 250 come in black.
