Album Spotlight: Rx Bandits

When I type “Rx Bandits” into my search engine of choice and I read the 1.5 sentence description of the band tagged to the Bandits’ site, I’m a little surprised.

“Orange County ska band with tour dates, photos, bio, press, and more…”

I’d rewrite that.

“Orange County Prophetic Zen Travelers charged with global salvation.”

Something like that.

Yes, it’s true, the Rx Bandits are from Orange County. But let’s stop there, because not much else can be said about this fivesome that fits in a two-sentence nutgraph.

The Bandits are a band the way bands were meant to be made. Aggressive and heady on their 1999 debut Halfway Between Here and There, soulful and stoned for 2001’s Progress.

2003’s Resignation was a fifty-minute tumble-dry roll rife with sexual wails, political backbone and societal condemnation.

All setting the stage for the Bandit’s masterpiece, …And the Battle Begun, an album that needs to be appreciated as a transition and a general movement in the direction of greatness.

Dropped in 2006 on the label started by guitarist/vocalist Matthew Embree, Mash Down Babylon (MDB Records), …And the Battle Begun is what I imagine John Coltrane and Bill Dixon would have sounded like if they knew how to rock.

Battle was patched together by live in-studio sessions and it shows; the Bandits are thrilling live, a viral emulsion of oh-oh callbacks and frantic, punched-out moshpits, cut with clean musicianship and overwhelming urgency.

I’ve seen them live five times in the past ten years and I leave every show thinking, yes, that’s what a concert should feel like.

And this is what an album should feel like. A sequential happening, each track considered and weighed, melding together to write a story of addiction, blind hope, false bravado and the collective middle finger.

The album opens with “Untitled”, an a cappella lyrical chant, Embree whispering “It’s over/I must have seen her face before,” as much a declaration of love lost as a warning that the shit is about to hit the fan.

“…And the Battle Begun” sets the tone for the rest of what’s to come: frenetic progressive rock with dramatic highs and lows, tempo shifts and mystical, lyrical exploration.

Embree pens many a tune for the downtrodden and the looked-over, and they’re all here on tracks like “One Million Miles An Hour, Fast Asleep” and “Epoxi-Lips,” songs teeming with verve, bubbling over into anarchic collapse.

"To Our Unborn Daughters” is a trembling, fleshy expose of gender inequality. Embree intones “Don’t you ever be afraid of all of your beauty/You can move without his words” in a cry to feminine arms.

For the lovers, there’s “Apparition,” a smoky, jazz-laden dip into reggae-flavored chill.

For the haters, there’s plenty.

The Bandits lean heavily on the foundations of insurgence and societal upheaval sown of Resignation.

“The past will die before the future’s born” moans Embree on “Crushing Destroyer.”

Please, more future.