Boyracer, Punker Than You Since '92

review by dave heaton

Boyracer have been punker than you since '92, if not before, though not in the way you might think. That is, they're not punk because they're wearing the right outfit, clothes-wise or musically. They're punker than you cause they've been following their own path, and winging their way through whatever pop song or feedback squeal they feel the urge to express. By 'they' I mostly mean 'he', since Stewart Anderson is the band's one constant, though everyone else in the band – currently mostly Anderson's wife Jen Turrell – has shared his spunk and independent spirit. Since '92 Boyracer has amassed quite a body of work, an impressive geography of noise and melody and sadness and anger and hope and heartbreak and sweat and some more noise.

The two-disc Punker Than You Since '92 (555) gives us 76 – yes, 76 – songs in testament to all of this. It's an exhilarating journey, starting in the present, in Arizona, and working its way back to the early '90s in Leeds, UK. And wrapping it all together, since a fair number of the older tracks were re-recorded in the present by Stewart and Jen, in cases where the rights to the originals weren't theirs, or were unclear. The new versions have the same reckless energy as the originals; no complaints here. They're not a band where you'd complain about that sort of thing, anyway, though. This isn't science, it's rebellion, it's music, it's an adventure.

For the same reason, summarizing what songs are here or aren't (and they're mostly here), or recounting dates of what was recorded when, seems fruitless. There's ridiculously rare tracks mixed in with more familiar ones, every step of their career is present, and that's about all you need to keep track of. It's all part of the same stream, anyway, and it's all pretty damn fantastic – as infectious and moving and invigorating as you'd want music to be. If you've miss out on Boyracer, your loss.

{www.indiepages.com/boyracer, www.darla.com}