Album Of The Day: Upbeats & Beatdowns by Five Iron Frenzy

Album Art of Five Iron Frenzy's Upbeats And Beatdowns album - On a bright blue background, a collection of ovals and circles in dark blue, green, yellow, orange and red are in the middle and occasionally on top of each other. The band's name is printed in white with a dark blue border above these circles in a large, fun serif font. Below it in a much smaller comically inconsistent font is the album title, and below that a circular '5Fe' logo with 10 dots surrounding the circle. At the very bottom in small print it says '* fun for kids of all ages'.

Released 29 years ago today, this is the first full-length album from this Christian ska band that has a bit of a cult following. With song titles like "A Flowery Song", "Anthem", and "Cool Enough For You" and the bright horns throughout, you might think this is just a fun band for the kids to dance to. But actually, if you look a bit deeper than the superficial, you will see that Five Iron Frenzy were communicating that although God is good, life is a bit more complicated than kids are taught in Sunday school. "The Old West", for example, is about the violence mixed with faith by the white settlers towards the Native Americans. "Beautiful America" uses the song about America from West Side Story to tell of the dangers of consumerism and other things. And even though I listened to it a number of times, I had to have someone point out to me that "Everywhere I Go" was a cover of an Amy Grant song because it sounds so different, but it certainly is so. This album is a good example of the ska craze that was everywhere back in the late '90s, powered by a punk rock vibe with horns throughout. Five Iron Frenzy's debut album has lots of passion and very good production values and musicianship for the time.

Release Year: 1996
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Album Of The Day
Music

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