Harrison Ford Mustang - Harrison Ford Mustang

Label: Potluck
Year: 2019

If you know me (and count yourself lucky if you don't), you know there isn't much I hold sacred. Or even remotely care about...I mean, if we're being honest. Not like, "full blown nihilist" kind of "don't care", just more like, "I'd rather not, cause I'm pretty sure it will end up disappointing, and I'm confirmed lazy as shit, so...yeah...let's not", kind of "don't care".
Make sense? Doesn't really matter, and, if you're anything like me, you wouldn't care anyway.
But, what does matter to what we (I) are (am) talking about it is that for whatever reason (immaturity? I'm guessing?), my old home state of North Carolina holds a special place in my heart, and more specifically her bountiful musical offerings shall forever illicit involuntary spasms of joy in my rapidly decaying human-like Symbiote. Kinda like, I hold the music of my NC upbringing as...something akin to sacred. If my emotional void will allow.
And yeah, I know that you must tire of hearing me opine for some thirty plus year old tarheel glory years (the state mascot, not the school mascot of the hated University of North Carolina [Go Deacs!]), but, goddamn y'all, when it hits, it fucking hits! I've spent years on this very dark and cobwebbed corner of the internet lamenting the lack of catchy, guitar based, indie rock in this day and age, that you used to trip over in every burg across NC, from Tate Street to Trade Street to Hillsborough Street, to Tuckaseegee Road, to East Main Street. It was as ubiquitous as Jesse Helms jokes, and it became part of any North Carolinians (of a certain vintage) DNA. Didn't matter if you loved Buzzov*en and C.O.C. and Antiseen and Blownapart Bastards...you still could hum any Archers of Loaf song requested on command. That's just how it goes.
So then, a few years back, this band The Kneads comes up and introduces themselves as the literal spawn of Greensboro, NC (honk if your friend had his balls stepped on whilst laying on his back in the middle of the pit at a Christ On A Crutch show at The Miracle House Of Rock) indie rock royalty; Raymond Brake and Geezer Lake, like the fucking Ghost Of NC Indie Rock Past himself! And they delivered the goods! Do you remember me raving about their two albums? Does anybody remember laughter? They were perfect nuggets of everything fun and pure and exciting about that specific, and wildly difficult to replicate, strain of underground music. If you never heard them, you should absolutely go and seek them out...I'll wait here.

Back?

Ok, well, like everything terrible in this careening cesspool of a life (there's that nihilism-adjacent good cheer), right when things are going great, The Kneads up and call it quits. Didn't even have the common courtesy to leave a note. I mean, here I was, like an asshole, operating under the auspices that we are living in a Kneads World, when I get wind (a foul wind) that the band broke up. Egg on my face (vegan egg replacer, actually). But...and let's talk about your big "but"...those dampened  tidings carried with them a promise of redemption. For, while The Kneads were put to sleep, from their still warm corpse arose a new band with a couple of the same guys and a very similar raison d'etre...to craft super catchy, memorable, fun songs that bear the genetic markings of the Merge, Alias, and D-Tox, record labels.

It works...again. Harrison Ford Mustang continue to stoke my long distance love affair with the treasured sounds of the greatest cultural export The Old North State has produced (with apologies to Meadowlark Lemon), the ramshackle, punkish, sardonic indie rock that can only originate from the fertile soils of North Carolina. Thank you Harrison Ford Mustang, your service should be recognized by a Sir Walter Raleigh award! (I assume...I actually don't know if that's a thing).

P.S. - please note how proud I am that I didn't mention Superchunk once, in this entire NC-centric write up.

DL