I've got a new favourite French band. I've never had a favourite French band before.

The title of this blog was a text I sent to my girlfriend after a gig at Urban Bar in Whitechapel last Thursday. It was drenched in too much mid week drinking and that feeling you get when you see a band for the first time who make you smile so much it almost hurts. That feeling that keeps you going back to shitty punk shows on week nights when you're really getting too old as you have to get up at five the next morning to continue the banality of your working life. That feeling that adds a bit more colour to your life. Aye, that feeling.

Photo by Daz Griswald

The band were Maladroit, a pop punk band from Paris, France who've been around since 2009 but I'd only become aware of last year. After I posted this blog Daz from Griswalds got in touch to say thanks and gave me a heads up on a label from Europe who had put out some of his favourite releases over the last few years. The label was Monster Zero, run by some of the guys from The Apers and one of the many great bands who had released records through the label were Maladroit.

Photo by Daz Griswald

Maladroit are a bit stupid, a little clever, a tad melancholic and a lot of fun. They've got an album out and a handful of 7 inches and the songs are typical pop punk fair which aren't to be taken too seriously but are played with passion and a huge sense of enjoyment. File them somewhere between Cletus, Nerf Herder and The Connie Dungs.

Photo by Daz Griswald

Anyway, when I realised I'd never got close to having a favourite French band before (I think I may once have pretended to enjoy Saian Supa Crew to impress a girl or something years and years ago) it got me thinking how often the rest of Europe is overlooked. Britain only looks to America and America only looks at itself. But what about just over the water? It seems there are great bands over on the mainland and that they're a little bit stuck in the 90's. The Lookout! Records version of the 90's. It's a pop punk haven. I'm not sure why this might be. Maybe over there they have less pretensions about what is cool at the moment; about what our American cousins are doing. Maybe they found something they loved and just kept doing it. Maybe they just want to have a bit of fun and add that bit of colour. Maybe, just maybe, they're the trend-setters. So I thought I'd have a sort of Eurovision^* song contest of bands I've heard over the last few months that should be checked out and encouraged to come over to Britain as from what I can tell that doesn't happen as much as it should.

* It's nothing like the Eurovision song contest; more just a few bands (and semi reviews) I like who have released records on the aforementioned Monster Zero Records. A EuroTimon** contest. With no winners. Or rather they're all winners. They're all my new (or existing) favourite bands from their respective countries. What an honour.

** My spell checker tried to change this to Neurotic. Hmmmm.

Austria

TheMugwumps- Banana Brain

Everything goes back to The Ramones for these guys; you can see it in the leather jackets they wear, the lyrics they write and the melodies they sing. It's simple, it's catchy, it's fun. There's a Queers vibe going on too (who go back to the Ramones anyway) and a tinge of Teenage Bottlerocket (who go back to the Ramones via the Queers anyway) and blah, blah, blah. Good pop punk songs okay!

Denmark

The20Belows- Late Nights

This band are a bit different. And a lot good. This album is one of the best things I've heard in a while and sounds somewhere between The Weakerthans, Swingin' Utters and The Cut Ups. Songs about drinking and playing records and drinking whilst playing records. When they sing "While I'm sure there's many better stories to be told/ ones of broken men and alcohol are never getting old" you just have to agree; not when they're played and told like this. The whole album is catchy as hell, it's poppy, it's punky but it'd probably be a bit amiss of me to just lump it into the pop punk bucket. It's so much more than that. Not exactly original but pretty damn unique.

France

Maladroit-Jerk Alert!

I've already written enough about these guys but you should check this out, okay? It has songs called 'I Hate Your Hello Kitty Underwear' and 'There's No "I" in DIY'. There's a couple of songs in French too which is nice, glad to see the whole continent hasn't been totally Americanised/ Anglicised to the tune of the 'language of pop'.

Italy

TeenageBubblegums- Learn From Yesterday, Live For Today, Pray For Tomorrow

Like Bis on speed. They sell t-shirts that proudly state 'Love Songs Only', they have a lovely Valentines Day split with Maladroit, sprayed with perfume and a heart shaped lyric card that's just come out. This album has ten songs on it which speed along in no time at all. Sing-a-long love anthems that should have you bopping around your room till you can't any more. If you have a heart anyway.

The Netherlands

The Apers- S/T

This record is actually The Apers debut album from way back in 2001 re-released on Asian Man Records. The Apers have been going since 1996 and this album is a classic of the genre. Love songs for the demented and the unlucky. Fast, short, great songs. If these guys were American I've no doubt they'd have been held in the same esteem as The Queers, Chixdiggit and Mr T Experience. It's almost a perfect example of a pop punk record. Do yourself a favour and give it a go.

You can get all these records through Monster Zero.

Or Brassneck Records in the UK stock most of their catalogue.

No One Seems To Understand The Glory Of Guitars When Out Of Tune, The Off Timing, The Singers Who Can't Sing. The Beauty Of Flaw*

As someone who thinks punk music may have really come about so that the rhyming couplet thinking and drinking could have a proper home (it's the best rhyming couplet ever written and sang, closely followed by Romeo/ Oreo as in "I wanna be her Romeo/ I wanna lick her Oreo" from 'I Wanna Be With Her' by The Connie Dungs) pop punk was always going to be my favourite variant of the genre when I discovered it. I remember reading Maximum Rock 'N' Roll back in the late 90's and being intrigued by band names such as Operation: Cliff Clavin, Sicko and Boris The Sprinkler and entered into a band finding mission (similar to the one that I undertook with Fat Wreck and related bands a couple of years previously) which took me from Mutant Pop Records to Crackle! Records** to Speedowax Records and everything in between in a few short months.

The bands on Epitaph Records and Fat Wreck Chords of the mid 90's and beyond obviously have a firm footing in the pop punk genre but they have transcended it to become a variant of the genre in their own right. The Epi-Fat sound is different from what I now think of 'proper pop punk' and for the main part I'll be shoving them to one side for this piece as for me the song writing has become a rather boring and far too easily and crucially oft repeated formula, which is probably a view shared by the proprietors of these labels if their recent signings and releases are anything to go by.

Pop punk to me is basically what it says on the tin; pop music played fast, with attitude, humour and passion. It doesn't take itself too seriously but it is serious. It's not about reinventing the wheel; it's about having a good time but at the same time about educating, protesting and sharing ideas. So really it's about drinking  and thinking, thinking and drinking.

A photo of some records

Pop punk had disappeared from my life over the last five years or so, as Green Day made it massive and became bland and other bands split up to become post hardcore, emo or gruff punk bands the amount of bands pedalling non Epi-Fat pop punk (Ramones, Dickies and/or Chrimpshrine sounding stuff) seemed to diminish, either that or I got bored of looking. Or perhaps I was deluding myself that if I listened to The Hold Steady or Titus Andronicus I was somehow growing as a human being; that I wasn't a kid any more. This has it own problems though as a lot of my favourite songs from my 'youth' (the ones not about thinking or drinking, or thinking and drinking) were about not wanting to grow up, not wanting to fit in with my parents generations model of society, about wanting to feel young, different and having solid ideals forever. So if I was deluding myself I was hiding a part of me that I had always believed in and although I do love the two aforementioned bands they weren't the ones who were there when I was crying in my room over a teenage broken heart; Skimmer were and they made me laugh, The Mr T Experience were and they made me cry. And then made me see how stupid everything was and how EVERYONE goes through crap like this. At least everyone who likes crappy songs played by ugly blokes with bad haircuts in less than two minutes. They were me, I was them.

 So it was with great interest I found two gigs in the same week purporting to be pop punk gigs and I obviously decided to go along. I say obviously as I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't go. On Monday (03/06/13) Delay, Spoonboy, Martha and Bad Librarian were playing the Cricketers in Kingston. Unfortunately I missed most of Bad Librarian due to spending some of my CAMRA Wetherspoons vouchers in The Kings Tun beforehand and then getting a little lost so I'll skip to Martha. Martha are the two blokes from the brilliant ONSIND and two others. On Stage they looked like two sets of two different bands; a couple of punk kids and a couple of indie kids and their music bears that out. It's a cross between indie pop and pop punk and it works; you've got some indie pop jangly guitar playing and almost shouty vocals so you end up somewhere between RVIVR and Milky Wimpshake which on paper doesn't make sense but live and on record it does. They're the only band I know that have managed to cross between two genres both in their sounds and the 'scenes' they play in; they play punk gigs like this one but are also playing the indie pop scenes biggest festival Indietracks. This should definitely be encouraged, other than cardigans, baked goods and some awful tweeness the indie pop scene and sound isn't that far away from pop punk at all. As they’re straight edge they’re more likely to rhyme not drinking and thinking but it should be apparent that thinking is the predominant word within the couplet. Anyway check them out here.

A rubbish photo of Martha

Spoonboy, from Washington DC was superb, first playing a couple of songs solo and then being joined on stage by three members of Martha he played political tinged songs about patriarchy, hating his dad and hating his dad some more. And some other things too. He has a few albums and EPs that you can hear on his bandcamp page here but to me he sounded a bit like a cross between J Church, The Weakerthans and Billy Bragg, so it's kind of pop punk, kind of folk punk. Don't let that put you off though, it would be best if you made up your own mind. I certainly recommended him; quirky, incisive, interesting, poppy and bloody brilliant.

Delay are a punk band from Ohio who were a little better than okay. They seemed like nice guys and had a few good sing-a-long songs (at least one guy at the front seemed to think so) but they just didn't do it for me, I'm not sure what it was, just not my thing, maybe just not my kind of pop punk, maybe not that pop punk at all. Good songs played well though, you can check out their new album here.

On Wednesday (05/06/13) my local punk pub the Birds Nest in Deptford hosted The Lemonaids, The Kimberley Steaks, Wonk Unit and Griswalds. First things first; if you live in London please go and support the Birds Nest by going to a gig or two and buying some drinks there every month, it's a nice little venue and all the gigs are free so there's no excuse not to.

Griswalds are a pop punk band from Orpington who have been going since 1995. Nineteen Ninety Fucking Five. They sing songs about UFOs, teenage heartbreak and other nonsense, they sound a lot like the Ramones and Screeching Weasel. When I first moved to London I saw their name on a flyer for gigs at the Birds Nest and thought that it couldn't possibly be the same Griswalds from the nineties so I popped along to the gig and lo and behold it was them. And they were ace. And are ace every time I see them. They even threw in a Toast cover in this set. These guys deserve to be checked out, they're fun, poppy, loud and have been going for 18 years. They should be more highly thought of in the UK punk scene in my opinion but I guess it's because they've always pedalled the end of pop punk that's never actually been that cool but with bands like Masked Intruder and Teenage Bottlerocket becoming a bit more popular maybe it's time for people to show them some love. Or at least turn up to one of their gigs and check them out, they're as close to an institution the 90's UK scene has left and should be revered for being so, even its only for the fact they've had the gumption and dedication to do something they love and believe in for so long.

Wonk Unit were up next and were led by a crazed, charismatic front man singing songs about being a plasterer and idiots on public transport. They fit somewhere in the ether between Snuff, Anal Beard and Boris The Sprinkler. If you like your punk rock fun and slightly strange check these guys out. Really good live show, you can check out their album here and after you've listened to that do yourself a favour and check them out live.

The Kimberly Steaks, from Glasgow sounded to me like a cross between Goober Patrol and early Green Day with a bit of Jawbreaker thrown in for good measure but you can probably discount that as I had a build up of wax in my ears. They were pretty cool and are well worth checking out, you can do exactly that here.

TheLemonaids, also from Glasgow were absolutely fucking brilliant, Queers type surf pop punk with loads of song titles that contain brackets (I LOVE brackets!! (Love them)). Alongside most of the bands that played at the two gigs they reminded me of why I fell in love with pop punk in the first place; it felt and looked like a fun place to be. They reminded me it was and is a fun place to be. They even chucked in an 8 song Ramones medley. There wasn't anything especially original on show but the three chords, sing-a-long choruses and joy that the band played with meant that everyone in the pub went home with a smile on their face. The Lemonaids include at least one guy (or maybe just used to?) from the superb pop punk band The Muderburgers who have just signed to Asian Man Records in the US. That is a very big deal. Pop punk is back, and it's still as brilliant and as vital to some people as it ever was. And in the case of some, namely the Griswalds, it never went away. Sometimes, I guess, you've just got to keep believing in the things that you love.

I can't see pop punk ever reaching the heights again where one of it's lesser known singers (Rev Norb from Boris The Sprinkler) amusinglyappeared on the Jenny Jones show or where it's biggest beneficiaries (Green Day) are able to write and sell out a Broadway musical but I think that's a good thing. Pop punk is back in the hands of the people who love it and know it best. People who love to drink and think and love rhyming the two words together in passion fuelled, honest, fun pop music.

* From NOFX- Jaw, Knee, Music. (I know using NOFX lyrics as a title is out of sync with the article but life is full contradictions. Deal with it.)

**This article was mostly written whilst listening to the Killed By Crackle! compilation. If you don't own it, you should.