[The Bad Things celebrate this week’s release of their new album, After the Inferno, with a release party at Columbia City Theater Friday evening, September 19. Doors at 8:00 p.m; show at 9:00 p.m. Tickets–$10 advance, $12 day of show–are still available here.]
It sounds strange to call a series of songs about death, alcoholism, thwarted love, larceny, and suicide inspiring. But After the Inferno, the latest full-length from Seattle underground cabaret stalwarts The Bad Things, always maintains a fighter’s spirit—and a brotherly bear hug of love—no matter how grave things get.
The Bad Things have always reveled in that dichotomy. Like most of the band’s output, the songs on After the Inferno stir traditional pre-rock-and-roll ingredients into songs that use unashamedly pretty (if sometimes raucous) melodies to leaven the lyrical darkness. Black humor and sentimentality go hand-in-hand in The Bad Things’ wonderful pocket universe: It’s the place where Tom Waits and The Pogues dance jigs together during the good times, and cry on each other’s shoulders during the bad.
The songs on After the Inferno don’t feel retro, so much as they feel like a heartfelt continuation of lots of traditional styles outside mainstream rock’s myopic lens (Brecht/Weil cabaret, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley pop, Tex-Mex, etc.). All of the dynamics on the record—from Steve Kamke’s kitchen-sink drums to Austin Quist’s swinging standup bass to Beau Hebert’s gently-plucked mandolin—sound completely organic, and there’s no attempt to gussy up things with retro-kitschy reverb or other studio tricks (The Bad Things produced After the Inferno themselves).
That warm but bare-bones production approach exists to showcase the songs, and After the Inferno sports several beauts, all band originals. The clattering “Grifter’s Life” paints a vivid portrait of dishonor and decay among con men, set to a jumping, saber-rattling polka, while “Careless Maria” lilts with a mariachi-country swing that’d do Marty Robbins proud. The sublime “Can’t Get Enough of Love” pulses like a great vintage ska ballad, with Brendan Hogan’s warm trumpet providing romantic counterpoint as band leader Jimmy Berg croons with the charming awkwardness of a pug-nosed 1930s Dead End Kid.
Fate’s hurtled plenty of misfortune at The Bad Things in the six years since their last proper band effort, 2008’s It’ll All Be Over Soon, and After the Inferno acknowledges all of that loss with clear eyes. Fire gutted the band’s longtime practice space (and a goodly share of their equipment) in 2012, several of their loved ones shuffled off this mortal coil over the last half-decade, and two of their closest pals (Joe Albanese and Drew Keriakedes of God’s Favorite Beefcake) perished in 2012’s Cafe Racer shootings. Even without all of that extra emotional heft, After the Inferno would be terrific. Knowing that backstory, however, renders The Bad Things’ newest effort nothing short of inspirational.