Optimism might feel outdated, but Downtown Boys are proud outliers. On Public Luxury, the Rhode Island band’s third and best album, they wear their politics proudly – while bringing new ambiguity, strangeness and shadow to their passionate, sax-blasted bilingual punk. Opener No Me Jodas (Don’t Fuck With Me) comes out roaring, fists up, but gives way to a bouncing, joyous bassline: a brutal, big-hearted reminder that there’s beauty in fighting for what you believe in.
In the nine years since the band’s last record, they’ve served as public defenders and co-founded the United Musicians and Allied Workers union, and the five-piece sound muscled-up, reinvigorated, by this work. Viva La Rosa kicks off like dive-bar punk, before transforming into something grander, with soaring electric guitar and darkly beautiful lyrics: “Todavía creo en un future / Todavía veo nuestros muertos” (I still believe in a future / I still see our dead).
Sirena boils with the heat that Downtown Boys bring to their frenzied live shows, egged on by magnificently throaty vocals from Victoria Marie, sounding as if she’s singing down a megaphone. Stomping drum machine and funky, bubbling synthesiser make You’re a Ghost campy and industrial as it rails against state surveillance, while Yellow Sun finds a kind of serenity in protest: Marie yells “I’m so heavy with love!” over warm vibraphone and hissing hi-hats.
For all its ferocity, Public Luxury ends on a lightly clubby coda – muted house chords, a whistling melody and a not-very-subliminal message: “Take the fall with me,” they beckon. Cynicism begone!
