Pop Punk Versus Capitalism

Some of the more literary conscious records have a narrative arc. Rarely, though, do they have an ironic twist ending. Face to Face's Big Choice, which on first listen seems so shallow and two-dimensional, has just this twist. It's some real thanks-for-the-comb-but-I-cut-off-my-hair-to-buy-you-a-chain-for-your-pocket-watch type shit. I've talked about face to face before, but the true beauty of this album didn't hit me until jamming it in my rented Ford Focus along the all-too-narrow roads of Ireland while my exhausted wife tried to sleep in the back. It's a beautiful, beautiful disc, and like many beautiful things, it's an indictment of capitalism. The artwork on a CD is always an indicator of its anagogical meaning. Whereas the album cover itself needs to have instant recognition and massive commercial appeal, the CD itself is free to be dressed however the artist wants. The cover of big choice is a standard U.S. Quarter, front side up, profile of Mr. George Washington shining brightly. It's so ridiculously obvious now that I feel ashamed having owned the disc for the last 12 years without putting two and two together. But there's a part of me, a strictly anti-intentionalist, anti-foundationalist, anti-thinking-artists-are-even-sort-of-conscious-of-the-artistic-statements-being-made-in-their-name side of me that predicts Face to Face weren't even aware of their own message. The whole idea of the first twelve songs is, "hey, I have a big chance to make a lot of money, but I feel like I'm compromising my integrity by doing so, so instead I will resist as much as possible, which I'm very aware, by the way, might be an utterly futile gesture at this stage in the world of late capitalism. It's a Drieserian naturalism, forcing individulas underneath the weight of an unwieldy and out of control society. We are, as Social Distortion--one of Face to Face's biggest influences--would say, "Born to lose and destined to fail."
Face to Face gets a little more in-depth, with lines like, "what is wrong and what is right? Everything is justified." and "I want my chance, I want what's mine." Trever Keith also gets sarcastic: "We've been too tolerant. Something has to change," "This was all your choice. Good to see it hasn't changed you." and the biting, "Tell me all about your favorite human being. Tell me everything about yourself. God the story is so terribly interesting."

These last few lines, and several others, personify the capitalist beast as a singular person, with whom Keith has a Faust-esque exchange. "Velocity," one of Face to Face's best songs, which also serves as the apex for the rising action of the album, sums up Keith's attitude toward the beast with the bridge-line, "So let me take a good look at your perfect life, so I know just exactly how I don't want mine." After which, the music slows to a crawl before slowly rising back up.

And here's the thing.

That rise is the start, the re-emergence of something intense. After Velocity comes the aptly titled "Debt," in which Keith loudly and vehemently proclaims, "I don't owe you anything!"
But that second-person, that capitalist, is certainly not going to agree to those terms. He'll let Keith have his moment in the sun, then he'll go in for the 11th hour kill.

After the album proper finishes, there's a conversation between the band and man with an English accent who is said to be the owner of the record label. He tries to convince Face to Face to put, "Disconnected," their hit song from their previous album, onto this record. Face to Face rejects this out of hand, saying they don't want to "lose the credibility with their following" or "sell out." They summarily end the conversation with, "No offense, but there's no way in hell that song is going on this record."

Then, immediately, without so much as a pause to think about it, Disconnected starts up. The present is unwrapped, and it's a comb for the lady's recently shorn hair. The album's worth of mounting evidence against exploitive capitalism has been completely undercut by the penultimate song. But that's not the best part. Face to Face then reaches back to their roots, back to an era way before and entirely antithetical towards the flirtation of punk rock with late capitalism to cover The Descendents' "Bikeage." It's a song, literally, about prostitution, and it makes for a fitting conclusion to an album left with no choice but to prostitute itself, in spite of its overwhelming desire to stay pure.