- Far from the bright lights of the music industry, a subculture of folk-punk healthily maintains its existence, played on acoustic instruments and often in informal venues.
Shit Keeps Happenin', the third EP from Melbourne artist Jude Joseph, fits comfortably under the folk-punk umbrella. His music is thrashed out at breakneck speed on an acoustic guitar, the production raw, his gigs as likely to be in a park as on a stage. Musically it is reminiscent of genre heroes Pat The Bunny or Erik Pederson, though maybe without quite the aggression or nihilistic worldview of either.
For better or worse, Shit Keeps Happenin' represents many of folk-punk's distinctive traits. It is raw, simple music. To quote one lyric, "next time I wear my heart on my sleeve I hope I get greeted with a 'nice jacket mate, can I try it on?"
To be honest, that's about as far into metaphor as any of these five songs delve. Mostly it is an upfront and perceptive exploration of the inner and outer world of a hopeful, punk rock loving, occasionally drug taking millennial. As the best chorus goes, "Everyone's so burnt out, burning cigarettes at both ends / Falling over incidents I swear are trivial at best / So why do we still feel the stress?".
Mental health, romance and politics all sit intertwined on a record that is deeply personal but not sentimental. Mix that with Jude's plain voice and rhythmic guitar playing and you get a pretty good summary of the appeal of melding together two much loved but terminally unfashionable styles of music.
As such, Shit Keeps Happenin' is unlikely to be a knockout commercial or critical hit. But for those new to the genre, it is not a bad place to dive in. For the connoisseurs of folk-punk, Jude Joseph has made another release full of life-affirming potential singalong moments.
- Andy Paine.