Joykiller: Ready Sexed Go!

The recent release of Joykiller’s Ready Sexed Go! demonstrates the limitations on traditional punk and the way that a music that started as a rebellion fizzled when it became little more than a style.

But it also demonstrates the way a band can revitalize itself when it leaves the conventions of a narrowing genre behind and explores new approaches — in this case, a surprisingly poignant pop sensibility that connects the Los Angeles band to its ’60s forebears.

The band — considered something of a Los Angeles punk super group — formed from members of T.S.O.L. and the Gun Club in the middle ’90s, releasing three albums in three years before disbanding. Its sound initially was pretty limited, a raw approximation of the thrashing surf punk scene that the band grew up in and the rather mediocre hair metal sounds of Los Angeles a decade before.

Over time, however, the band found ways to expand their sound, moving away from the narrow confines of ’90s punk by incorporating elements of the Beach Boys and other ’60s pop sounds into the mix, granting more prominence to Ronnie King’s keyboards.

Ready Sexed Go!, which brings together all of the material from the first three discs plus some unreleased material, takes the listener from the band’s early hardcore beginnings to the later stuff, a voyage that takes the listener from what is fairly unlistenable junk to a some of the better pop-influenced hard rock released in recent years.

On — “Show Me the System”, a simplistic political rant — the band finds a rough approximation of the heyday of punk, a raw, frenetic assault that comes as close as anything Joykiller recorded to finding the negation-turned-liberation that defined punk. “Go Bang”, with its snide sexual come on — “Being human’s such a mess / Let’s get undressed” — and grinding tempo, smacks of late ’70s New York. Unfortunately, the rest of the first eight songs — the entirety of the band’s self-titled debut — are unexceptional in their sameness, a mix of glorified heavy metal riffing and weak approximations of the Dead Kennedys.

The band’s second album, Static (tracks nine through 17), is much of the same — except for the ’60s-style pop harmonies that lend a more human element to what had been mostly noise their first time out. On several of the cuts — number 10, Number 13, number 15 and number 15 in particular — the background vocals and more prominent piano flesh out the songs’ hyper-paced tempo. Lyrically, the band has shown growth, as well, the songs exploring more traditional themes of love and lust and employing more traditional pop formats — like on “She’s So Static”.

Three, the band’s third album (tracks 18 through 24), continues Joykiller’s growth, sounding like a lighter, poppier version of the Buzzcocks. As with its first two efforts, the band rarely slows the tempo (the unexpectedly tender “The Doorway” is the exception), but on songs like “She’s Something Else”, the synthesizer and keyboards temper the frenetic pace. And on “Ordinary”, which opens with a power chord riff, mixes tempos, while “Love You Now” stirs together elements of early Squeeze with harder punk bands like 999 or, again, the Buzzcocks.

The final eight tracks — yes, this is a 32-track disc — are from an unreleased album initially conceived for a new, unnamed band and feature a completely different crew of musicians (including Frank Agnew of the Adolescents, who turns in some nice guitar work). The material shows some of the strengths of Three and Static, but suffers from a sameness born of there just being too much material included on disc and from the absence of Ronnie King (lead vocalist Jack Grisham takes over on keyboard for tracks 25 through 31, with King returning for the final cut).

Ultimately, at its best, Joykiller finds the link connecting its various selves, mixing a power-pop sensibility into the hard-edged punk-metal riffing, the keyboard and piano expanding the band’s sonic range and softening its unnecessarily gruff edges. Ready Sexed Go! is the band at its best and its worst and is worth a listen — if only for the 16 cuts that make up Static and Three.