Phoenix-based folk-punk outfit Andrew Jackson Jihad proved on Sunday night at High Dive that punk isn’t dead. What’s more, it can be all at once smart, sincere and totally delirious.
The group, which has been a fixture at Fest and recorded its “Gift of the Magi 2: Return of the Magi” music video at the Alachua County Fair Grounds, returned to Gainesville last weekend as part of a stop on its 2014 summer tour with Cheap Girls and Dogbreth.
The tour follows the May release of “Christmas Island,” its fifth studio album. Their cult following of longtime fans and music critics praised the new record’s texture, depth and “bright, bouncy bloodbaths.”
“We’ve been pretty good about each new release kind of challenging our fans and…not just remaking the same record,” said bassist Ben Gallaty. “And we have a lot of fun with it too, you know, in the studio, being like, ‘What the f**k are people gonna think of this?’”
You’d be hard-pressed to find many other bands that manage to make an acoustic guitar and stand-up bass sound heavy, but singer/guitarist Sean Bonnette and Gallaty did so with aplomb, along with current members Preston Bryant (keyboard/guitar), Deacon Batchelor (drums) and Mark Glick (cello).
Their sound ranged from gleefully misanthropic to somber and heartfelt. Many of the songs on “Christmas Island” deal with death and grief following the passing of Bonnette’s grandfather, including the striking ballad “Linda Ronstadt,” in which Bonnette describes a true story about breaking down in a museum after seeing a video installation about singer Linda Ronstadt.
“I almost made it through a year of choking down my fears/But they’re gone for now, all thanks to Linda Ronstadt,” Bonnette sang. In the same show, they performed a track off their 2011 album, “Knife Man,” titled “Fucc the Devil,” which opens with the line, “I’m gonna f**k the devil in his mouth.”
And though the sound is chaotic and frantic, you can relax about getting close to the stage at an Andrew Jackson Jihad show these days.
“Mosh as gently as you can,” Bonnette beseeched the audience after a few songs. He went on to gently remind the concertgoers that no one wants to “get a kick to the melon” by a crowd surfer.
The crowd’s high energy, Gallaty said, is due in part to the age of their fans: Though the men of Andrew Jackson Jihad are in their 30s, a considerable amount of their avid listeners are teens and 20-somethings.
“I think it’s great,” Gallaty said. “The kids are the ones that are gonna be in the bands of the next generation. So yeah, I just think that’s wonderful…and I love talking to ‘em. I think it’s really awesome when they come up and tell me what they think because I remember being that nervous kid when I was that age.”
This summer marks Andrew Jackson Jihad’s 10th year as a band — 10 years of playing shows, recording and watching their audience transform from nervous kids to musicians themselves. In a recent Reddit AMA, one Redditor asked the band why they’ve eliminated certain songs from their set lists over the years.
“There are songs off the first album where I’m just like, ‘Nah.’ It just doesn’t excite me anymore,” Gallaty said.
“We like to challenge our fans,” Gallaty said, “and we like to do what we like to do.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 - 11 on 6/11/2014 under the headline "Andrew Jackson Jihad returns"]
Lead vocalist Sean Bonnette and guitarist Preston Bryant, members of the band Andrew Jackson Jihad, perform at High Dive Bar & Venue on Sunday night.
Lead vocalist Sean Bonnette and guitarist Preston Bryant, members of the band Andrew Jackson Jihad, perform at High Dive Bar & Venue on Sunday night.
