Political rock spent fifty years of its 20th century in the delusion that bellowing more loudly was the same as saying more. Some band or another would emerge every decade, claim society was falling apart, discover a distortion pedal and then churn out something more suited to a school council election than any real kind of protest. The real skill isn’t sounding angry, that’s the easy part; the skill is convincing people to have a worthwhile four minutes inside your anger. Southern Wisconsin band Take Back The Sun are far closer to that than most of their contemporaries. “Modern Treason” is undeniably political but far too aware of the danger of becoming a Ted Talk masquerading as a power chord.
It captures instead something much more immediate and widely felt: the slow-motion nausea of existing in an age where you can’t tell where the satire begins or ends because the reality always seems one step more ludicrous. Instead of naming villains or proposing easy solutions, the song revels in that modern malaise where everyone professes to be saving democracy while actively making the world demonstrably worse. It’s less “fight the power” and more “has anyone even read the instruction manual?”
The band have avoided falling into the trap of treating punk as a museum exhibit. The guitars smash with enough force for anyone raised on a healthy diet of Hard Rock but never quite forget the melodic flourishes of the keys which refuses to be stuck politely in the back seat. The synths never quite decorate the song, as they do many a more traditional progressive effort. The instruments here clash with each other creating a great sense of atmospherics without becoming too polished. A smarter arrangement than merely adding another heavy guitar over another. This band isn’t really playing anything like anyone else; to my ears, it reminds me most of early, over ambitious, triple concept-album phase, when they presumably realized that playing rock and roll is not all there is to music.
In any case, Take Back The Sun clearly understand that a successful 7 track recording should be as efficient and focused as it needs to be without needing the indulgence that marked that particular period of Strummer and Company. A healthy blend of hard rock brutality, raw punk edge, progressive keyboards, and well-conceived pop melody gives the Take Back The Sun a unique sound that avoids becoming overly precious.
Having played together as Take Back The Sun since 2021, the band is still finding their sound. Their mixture of hard rock muscle, punk urgency, and melodic keyboards gives the music a distinctiveness that seems natural, as opposed to a compilation of influences. Take Back The Sun are far from solving America’s political divisiveness. But, they make a damn good record about living through the absurdity.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
