Next month, Pure Noise Records will release a new compilation called Dead Formats Volume 1, and it’ll feature a bunch of bands on the label’s roster covering songs that were influential to them. Most of those songs come from the punk and emo worlds of the ’90s and ’00s, and a lot of the songs that they’re covering are big ones. A few of the tracks from the compilation are already out there in the world, like LURK taking on the White Stripes’ “Fell In Love With A Girl” or Hawthorne Heights doing Eve 6’s “Inside Out.” Today, we get two different Pure Noise bands covering two inescapable ’90s ska songs.
Just a few months ago, Drug Church released Hygiene, one of the best hardcore-adjacent albums of the year thus far. For their contribution, Drug Church have covered “Someday I Suppose,” the breakout single that the just-broken-up Mighty Mighty Bosstones included on their 1993 album Don’t Know How To Party. Up until this cover, I don’t think I clocked the similarities between Patrick Kindlon and Dicky Barrett’s full-bodied bellows. In a press release, Kindlon says that the Bosstones were a huge gateway band for him: “This band I loved since age 12 and this hardcore thing I’m getting into at age 15 have crossover? How? It was like putting together a puzzle.” Here’s that cover:
The dreamy Atlanta punks of Microwave, a 2016-vintage Stereogum Band To Watch, have also dipped into the ’90s radio-ska well. They’ve offered up a woozy take on Sublime’s laid-back 1996 smash “Santeria.” Microwave’s Nate Hardy says, “Sublime holds a sacred place in our hearts. What an incredibly chill band. What an incredibly chill song.” Here’s the Casey Doran-directed video for their version of the song:
The Dead Formats Volume 1 compilation is out 8/29 on Pure Noise.
96