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NOTE: We have copies of the US and Euro pressing of this available.
The 3rd full-length from this brilliant but underrated power-pop band and I have to say I'm completely blown away again. I generally have a pretty low tolerance for bubblegum-punk, but Nancy do it absolutely perfectly. As on their earlier releases, they still sound a lot like the Jabbers thanks to their straightforward punk arrangements and rather high-pitched vocals, though Nancy are even sillier and more over the top than the Jabbers (this is like Muff Divers-level silliness I'm talking about here!).
At its core, this is simple, Ramones-influenced punk, and at the end of the day could be compared with 90s bands like the Queers or 00s bands like the Spits as anything else, and while that is a very crowded tradition, Nancy separate themselves from the pack with truly great songs. You may not want to like this, but once it's on your turntable I guarantee you'll have a very, very difficult time removing it.
There are a lot of options out there for dumb, sing-songy punk, but for my money Nancy are right at the top of the heap. I mean, it's your basic second-and-third-Ramones-LP influenced stuff (though their newer stuff is a hair more musically sophisticated and borders on power-pop), but the execution is completely flawless and the gleeful sense of absurdity is totally infectious. I mean, this is the band that has their own sea shanty!
It’s no secret that we are enthusiastic devotees of Joe Sussman’s work—he’s also a key player in Nancy as well as Dangus Tarkus and the outstanding MUFF DIVERS Dreams of the Gentlest Texture is the best thing he’s done so far. I’ve wasted a lot of time thinking (and having idle conversations, mostly with Seth and Jeff) about what makes a Muff Divers song different from a Nancy song or a Dangus Tarkus song, but I’m not sure there’s an answer to that riddle. The more important thing to note here is that—as good as all of those projects’ releases have been for some time now—each new one seems to be better than the last, and this is the best one yet.
Our take: We’ve been singing Nancy’s praises for years here at Sorry State, and Goes Country changes nothing about my opinion about the band. Which is that they fucking rule! The core of Nancy’s sound is high-energy punk with a glammy, power-pop edge. That glam rock twinge to the guitar-playing and the vocal melodies makes me think of the Boys or Protex, but Nancy’s hyperactive tempos are more akin to the Dickies, and the songwriting is in the same league as all three great bands. If Goes Country just strung together a bunch of punk-pop bangers like “Take a Pikksha” or “It’s Never 2 Late (2 Be You)” it would be killer, but there’s also this whole other level to the Nancy experience. Nancy has an off the wall sense of humor that ranges from the satirical to the silly to the surreal, and even funny songs like the title track warrant repeat listens. There are very few bands out there who can make me smile and get me excited the way Nancy does.