At first I felt bad about not knowing that Big D and the Kids Table put out a new record. After loving Fluent in Stroll and Strictly Rude, I walked For the Damned, the Dumb and the Delirious expecting another step in Big D’s audio evolution as a modern ska band. I was expecting more experimentation with sound of their music, but what I got was a record my fifteen year old self would have loved. Gone is the progress I heard on the previous two albums replaced with by the numbers skapunk that is fairly forgettable. There is also an overt glorification of drinking that I find out of place on this record, and this coming from a band that used to sing so tongue in cheek about going on Benders and drinking copious Pabst Blue Ribbon just does not make any sense to me.
I know I should give the record a few more listens before I really pick a stance, but my initial listening was so underwhelming that I have no huge urge to listen to it again. If it had been a well done and modern take on the skapunk sound, then I would have been more excited to listen to the album over and over, but it’s really not. It sounds so interchangeable with early 2000s “ska” (the shit that Suburban Legends and the like where trying to masquerade around as ska), that it feels like Big D have taken three steps back. And by extension I have no urge to hear this album live, which means that I have almost no urge to see Big D (a band I loved seeing) in concert anytime soon. I hope that this album is the equivalent of The Suicide Machines self-titled release (if you don’t know what I am talking about, go and listen to Destruction by Definition and Battle Hymns, and then their self-titled release), and is nothing more than a temporary stumble.
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