A good, old-fashioned best-of compilation album is something you rarely see in the indie music world. But that's exactly what we have here from Bart and the Brats, France's #1 '77-style garage punk (one-man) band. Out on London's Dirty Water Records, the new LP Pushin' Your Luck features 15 selections from Bart's existing discography (consisting of four-and-a-half albums and six EPs) and one previously unreleased track called "Pissin' in the Wind." Putting out this album was either a terrible idea or a stroke of genius. A good chunk of these songs have never been available on an LP. And if you've been aware of Bart and the Brats but have never pulled the trigger on buying a record, Pushin' Your Luck is a fine sampling of the band's body of work. It includes a whole slew of fan favorites such as "Can't Stand the Beatles," "Masochistic Pigs," "Constant Nonsense," "Good Cop, Bad Cop," and "Sick, Sick, Sick."
Recorded by Lo'Spider at Swampland, Toulouse and remastered for this release, these 16 tracks blast out raw, primitive three-chord punk that thumps you in the head with one hand and gives you the finger with the other. The joke about Bart and the Brats might be something along the lines of "If you've heard one of their records, you've heard them all." But that's a good thing, right? We don't want things like progress, artistic ambition, or proper musicianship ruining this band. Just look at some of the labels that have jumped on the Bart train: No Front Teeth, Sweet Time, Big Neck, Take the City....man, that's the best of the best in the punk rock world! This band embodies just about everything that makes punk music so great. I don't want to tell you to not buy all Bart's stuff. But since we're living in times of economic distress, you might need to be stingy with your cash. On that note, Pushin' Your Luck is a lot of value for the money and an excellent representation of a truly killer band.
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