by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Holyoke, MA’s Landowner are never short on words. With the band’s excellent sophomore album, Consultant, out now via Born Yesterday Records (Dummy, Stuck, Red Tunic) their scathing takedown of systemic racism via political agendas, the upper class, and disparities of resources is all delivered with an appropriate agitation. It’s working class punk for the thinking set, built on the lyrics of Dan Shaw but not without plenty of sharp, tangled, and repetitive progressions that lock in and twist with menace. Landowner want to activate you to think about exactly what privilege is and how it came to be, and they’re doing it with a clenched fist of sound.
“Old Connecticut Money” is the album’s closer, choosing to complete the record with an anxious burst of energy rather than a sense of calm or resolve. Through a hyper kraut-punk groove, the band snap right into the motorik beat from the start with an extended intro full of tightly coiled tension. The Piper W. Preston directed video follows a monster of the upper class (crest and golf clubs in-hand) animated by Shaw, before leading way to a well-captured performance of the band. They address that class gap with the cleverly delivered “you know the way that doors just open, swing wide open when you approach?” which they answer with “you said no, no I don’t know. He thinks it works like that for everyone. It doesn’t work like that for everyone.”