Vintage Crop - Company Man

There are certain songwriting topics that are so eternally tied to our shared human experience that they will never go out of style. At no point in human history, for example, will people not be able to relate to songs about heartbreak and lost love. If there's any other subject that rivals the love song for relevance to the human condition, it would have to be the plight of the dissatisfied worker. How many billions of people on this planet hate their jobs with a passion and dream of a time when they won't have to devote half their waking hours in service of someone else's profit?

Contemplating how many famous songs that are about broken hearts and how relatively few there are about miserable employment, I would say that's a gap that needs to be closed. Melbourne-based Vintage Crop is doing its part with its brand-new EP release Company Man. Out on Anti-Fade and Drunken Sailor Records, Company Man is practically a mini rock opera devoted to the trials and tribulations of life in a suit and tie. It manages to cram just about everything that's stifling and absurd and soul-destroying about the corporate environment into four sharp punk tunes that will have you wishing you had the cojones to rise up against The Man. Vintage Crop, yet another one of the remarkable punk groups to emerge from Aussie land in recent years, comes on here with a jagged, jumpy sound that falls somewhere between modern-day garage punk and early UK post-punk. The lyrics are sarcastic as hell and completely on-point, and they're sung with a conviction that could only have come from very unfortunate personal experience. I love how the title track builds to a feverish intensity and the ultimate sing-along moment. Play it at max volume on the drive home from work as you fantasize about the foul things you'll say to your superiors the day you finally walk out that door on your own terms. "Stock Options" is so savagely, wonderfully scathing that it just might be the anti-anthem for our times. The restlessness and anxiety surging through these songs could not be any more fitting. Whether you are miserable in your own job or just a general opponent of greed and unchecked corporate power, Company Man is sure to get you fired up in that way that only great punk music can. Don't do anything rash...or maybe you should! 



-L.R.

https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/company-man-7-ep 
https://vintagecrop.bandcamp.com/ 
https://www.facebook.com/vintagecropband/ 
https://www.facebook.com/DrunkenSailorRecords