The Singles Jukebox

Pop-punkers kick up little more controversy than last time around…

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Jonathan Bradley: Pity Me faves Martha return a bit less punk and a lot more power pop, their effervescent slapdash glee extending now to a pert swing rhythm and attempts to mosh to Huey Lewis and the News. “Love Keeps Kicking” holds its optimism in check with an almost discomfitingly earnest despair — and vice versa: you barely notice how quick “you were tripping fractals” turns into “sometimes I feel so empty I just wanna leave it all.” But there are jokes as well — “I need a paid interpreter to decipher your midnight texts” is shade worthy of Fight Like Apes. The first time I heard it, it sounded like the kind of classic that immediately asks you to pull together playlists so that it might literally sit beside other effortless classics, like say, “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone” and “Another Girl, Another Planet” and “Alex Chilton” and “Beat Surrender” and “The Boys are Back in Town.” (It’s as rousing as any of these.) But it also made me want to cue it up again and again. Martha: I am listening.
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Alfred Soto: “Is that Weezer?” the dude at the other table wondered when I played the opening bars without realizing the headphones weren’t plugged in.
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Ryo Miyauchi: Martha mines from sweeter-than-sweet jukebox favorites, and the verses leading to the big payoff of a chorus are filled with charmingly personal specifics. Every other line makes you want to inquire more about the story. “When you got smashed and tried to mosh to Huey Lewis and the News”: they could make a whole other song based on this.
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Iain Mew: We’re about a decade early for a song to precisely be to Belle & Sebastian’s “I’m a Cuckoo” what “I’m a Cuckoo” was to “The Boys Are Back in Town”, but never mind. It might be a scruffy ramble, but every time the harmonic guitar comes in it makes all the sense it needs to.
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Thomas Inskeep: Martha are supposedly a four-piece punk band, but all I hear on “Love Keeps Kicking” is mewling, whiny Brit indie that makes my teeth itch and my fist clench.
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Juana Giaimo: I find it easy to identify with self-deprecating songwriters — that’s probably why I love Paramore, especially in After Laughter. Martha often writes self-deprecating lyrics too, but “Love Keeps Kicking” also sounds really cheerful — there’s even an acoustic guitar strumming as the base of the song. However, there is something darker in the excess of energy. The backing vocals literally scream, and the main voice is too dramatic, as if he was pouring his heart out from desperation. This kind of irony is what makes Martha such a compelling band, able to understand the silly contradictions of love. 
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Alex Clifton: I suddenly understand why people love pop-punk; I would too if there were fewer whiny frontmen and way catchier melodies like the ones Martha have given us. This will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day, and I’m fine with that.
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Katherine St Asaph: I love power pop, but with so much of it, you have two choices: Weezer-indebted stuff that coats your inner ears with Reddit gold, and/or great tracks with pinched voices, more like love keeps kicking the shit out of their vocal cords. Note: I’d probably love this if it were a Veruca Salt or Sarge song.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Songs like “Love Keeps Kicking” remind you that mediocre power pop songs can make you think they’re good because of a repeated, catchy guitar riff. Don’t be fooled.
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Tim de Reuse: Okay, okay, I’m charmed, Martha, you got me. You’re not perfect, but you’re loose and messy in an energetic way, and you’re silly, but just the right amount of silly. I love the awkward pattern of emphasis on the stupendous line “I need a paid interpreter to decipher your midnight texts,” and the whole-hearted harmonized “ooh-yeah” of the chorus, and that addictive, twangy guitar lick! The mix is a bit flimsy for my tastes, but they’ve laser-focused on achieving a particular high-octane atmosphere, and I can’t disrespect people who are so clearly good at what they do while sounding like a bunch of goofballs.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There is a certain kind of song that exudes kaleidoscopic joy, where every note is so beautifully placed that you can’t help but love it. “Love Keeps Kicking” is one of those songs, dazzling in its shaggy glory. It’s all jutting edges that hold in your memory, from the guitar lines down to the show-stopper of a bridge. I can’t imagine getting this out of my head, and I can’t imagine wanting to, either.
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Vikram Joseph: When I first heard Courting Strong, Martha’s debut, I was enraptured; here was this headlong torrent of empathy, nostalgia, hope and anxiety, contained inside perfect three-minute bullets of jagged pop-punk, fired directly at my hypothalamus. They had grown up and come together as a band some 15 miles from where I grew up; it felt like it was meant for me. That kind of adoration and affinity generates expectations that border on fear, but this band keep on meeting them. The chorus of “Love Keeps Kicking” almost sounds a little too simple at first, until you hear the full phrase that gives the song its name: “Love keeps kicking the shit out of me, and there’s no solution I can see.” And then, despite the backdrop of rollicking, indie-punk power chords, it’s suddenly devastating; they’ve never sounded defeated like this, and it’s like seeing the most upbeat person you know in tears. The big chords dropping out feels like the mask – you know, the one you wear every day at work and when you see your friends so they’d never guess that, some days, you wake up feeling utterly hopeless – slipping to the floor. “No happy pill / no drinking bleach / no permanent lobotomy,” sings JC Cairns, his voice endearingly strained as usual, but for once running out of reasons to stay positive or ways to fix everything. That empathy, though, still runs through the song like an artery; the hyper-specific anecdotes in the verses are Martha’s way of making the pain communal, as they always have been. Love keeps kicking the shit out of us; remembering that might make it hurt a bit less when it does.
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