RIBS: Junk Dynasty Leaderboard

For those who lived through a generation where a physical piece of art was a vital source in one’s world instead of a dot in the rearview mirror, in a bid to negotiate and make sense of a vastly different modern world, perhaps the only way forward is to try and capture points of the past and make them relevant in the present. That’s what RIBS accomplish on their debut LP, Junk Dynasty Leaderboard.

Composed of Raleigh, NC underground alumni, RIBS is vocalist / guitarist Mike Wallace (Verity Den, Drag Sounds), bassist David Mueller (Birds of Avalon), guitarist Finn Cohen (The White Octave) and drummer Josh Germeroth (Faang Street).

Produced by the band alongside Missy Thangs (also of Birds of Avalon), Junk Dynasty Leaderboard sees old dogs showcasing completely new tricks. The early At the Drive-In echoes of The White Octave and intelligent synth-rock of Birds of Avalon, non-existent throughout the RIBS remit. Wallace also sheds new skins, trading in the Velvet Underground reverence of Drag Sounds for something that is beautifully off-kilter and positively unclassifiable, truly informed by the ambiguity of these times.

Take the opening gambit, Eddie’s Dub. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear a better opening track all year. Flanked by Cohen’s warm tremolo that is pitched in beautiful slow-motion ways where colours emerge through the sound, Wallace parts with random observations that are the lifeblood of this record. From the “hippy town with a drug problem” to “some of the truth gets so loud and losing a “taste for the night life”, these snippets are eerily Bukowski esque.

It’s not the only wordsmith that comes to mind. The spatial blues rock of Night Hoss and A Branch with No Dove sees Wallace spitting wisdom off the cuff with random extracts seemingly pulled from a dream journal. With everything from a surgeon in pursuit of a blood clot to cigarettes over card games and a dove’s frantic pursuit for a perch, there’s a surrealism reminiscent of Haruki Murakami. The residue drips into the, proto-tinged Saltpeter (“It’s a lifeguard’s world / But we like swimming at night”); Wallace’s delivery, like a poetic gunslinger who makes these songs turn on a dime.

The current world events don’t escape RIBS’ ire, either. On the glam-infused dub rock of the The Fight (“It’s budget season and they’ve been teasing a rate cut… The fight always comes home”), it follows the straight-shooting one-two of One True Form and Strontium Dogs. A deep dive into capitalism and, in particular, gentrification and how it’s pushed people out into obscurity. On the former, Wallace fiercely glowers through lens (“They say selling real estate takes hard brass / Selling souls in a buyer’s market… “We all know the world doesn’t have forever”), while the latter sees him at his most brutal (“You get enough hands going / It’s as good as a missile”).

In all its inventive, thought-provoking majesty, it’s the metallic echo of Put a Rush on the Bus where Wallace is at his most poignant on Junk Dynasty Leaderboard. Parting with the line, “You never know the precipice until you’re right at it”, it underlines the kind of immediacy and danger one used to associate with indie-rock. Except here, RIBS’ do it by being immersed in the dream-state, smashing together fact and fiction, and the results are cataclysmic.

Junk Dynasty Leaderboard is out now via Third Uncle Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.