It’s the chronicle of (maybe unfairly) labeled slackers that want to be more than what they are now, and also want to avoid the world. Everything’s a target in Prince Daddy & The Hyena’s small world, no matter how much loose fun they have with it.Īnd beneath all the violent bravado or the what-should-be-cringy declarations of “I wish I could CTRL+ALT+DEL my life,” there’s a certain vulnerability that comes with growing up in this time period. Nobody’s ever decided Jurassic Park 3 was good enough to be referenced in a song, let alone relating their life to the final scenes of it.
There’s a ton of detail in seemingly throwaway lines, sung in an almost out-of-tune weed-induced rasp whether they argue that “not-that-rapey” isn’t a convincing argument for a party, or “When the doctor said ‘No smoking, kid,’ I hope he just meant cigarettes.” There’s an obvious sense of youth to the record even when the rare pop culture reference breaks out, it relates to Jurassic Park 3. Entire sing-along choruses are dedicated to forgetting to take medication. They lie as an antithesis to '90s-era Rivers Cuomo, aiming outward where he would aim inward. Prince Daddy & The Hyena routinely build a world filled with the infuriating and the mundane, and then proceed to bash it down at every possible opportunity with a sledgehammer, without caring whether they hurt themselves in the process. World-building is not a concept naturally associated with the power pop, punk or emo scene. It makes for better listening when they merge. Angry punks and musical competency do not have to be mutually exclusive. To top it all off, it's coated in a fitting, almost garage-like production, emphasising the low fidelity and the intimacy of Prince Daddy's information overload. Hell, sometimes they just take two songs and combine them into one, all for the fun of it. Every dynamic build-up to the final chorus every introduction of a new distorted riff every tinnitus-inducing bout of feedback and cymbal crash before diving headfirst into a spiteful attack against strings and snares – it’s all there. The combination of pop sensibilities with a more ragged punk aesthetic is not necessarily a new concept in the realm of music, and that’s okay, because Prince Daddy & The Hyena indulge in its potential complexities so well that familiarity goes out the window. It’s hard not to make comparisons when Prince Daddy & The Hyena’s contribution to a split EP is a cover of Pinkerton B-side “Devotion.” It’s harder still when “Clever Girl” blatantly cribs and tunes down the first verse of “No One Else”, and somehow blends it with a condensed wannabe “Only In Dreams” to lead the song to its cathartic, distorted conclusion. Fifteen years later, even with Weezer’s second white-tinged comeback and resurgence in critical respect, a group of stoners from East Kentucky appear to have unintentionally repeated history once more. The year that Weezer attempted a green-tinted comeback after Pinkerton’s initial failure was the same year that Ozma released Rock and Roll Part Three, upending the new-found safety in Rivers Cuomo’s songwriting with waltzing odes to Natalie Portman. No matter the quality of their releases in the past, present or future, there will always be a younger band, with their influences on their sleeve and the ambition – or unintentional ability – to outdo their predecessors.
There’s an inevitable situation that appears when a band gains enough influence and traction in the world. Review Summary: you caught me at a real bad time
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