Covid is deadly and raging, right-wing terrorism is on the rise and Zoom is super awkward and glitchy, but I’m pretty sure I don’t care at the moment. Know why? I’m in this crazy diner called 1995 with my people, and I just put 75 cents into the Ska Machine. Waiter? Hi. I think what we’d all like is a couple plates of cool.
Ka. Frickin’. Ching. Bad Operation’s self-titled debut LP is a plain-jane ska album that girls and boys would be very down for skateboarding to at whatever spot they just picked out, maybe some alright curb near the convenience store. It’s a spirited brand study in a specific kind of loose-swinging music that isn’t quite in the good graces of critics these days: chill but energetic brass-tinted punky vibes that play pretty sweet while you do stuff.
Bad Operation rumbles along to a genre that suddenly left the culture one Tuesday long ago: third-wave ska. Their sound is big, easy and informed—this band did their homework. There’s a lot of breathing-room space in the rhythms, a lot of rum-bum-bum in the bass lines, and a lot of upbeat yep-yep-yep in the guitar joints. Do you like the Slackers? Are you also driving to the store in your robe and slippers to get some eggs? You’ll dig this nicely.
I feel definite soul in the vocals, but it’s out of another epoch. They haven’t updated anything for the Uncertain Times we’re living in. Dominic Minix is having a grand old time (you can see that in the videos released so far, for “Perilous” and for “Brain,” and heck—they’re all having a grand old time, even the dog). He captures a certain 90s ska vocal sound, of which there were a few general flavors: the whiny snot punk screech of Slapstick and Less Than Jake, the girl ska sheen of Dance Hall Crashers, and the crooning clean style of one Bucket Hingley. Dominic does his own goofy, carefree version of that last one marvelously, and maybe his stylings go back much farther, to ska’s roots. It fits exactly what they’re doing: joyously approximating the third-wave ska that appeared somewhere on all the comps from ’94 to ‘99. Somebody in NOLA dusted off the old instructions: hook up the trombone girl and the organ guy and do the ska guitar thing and let’s entertain the rudies. Hey you! Skank it up! That’s all it has to be sometimes.
Bad Operation sounds old because they’re going for old. We need it. They’re a museum exhibit for checkered slip-ons and corduroy shorts and marching band geeks briefly, mercifully getting a chance to be in a rock band.
The Bad Operation sound has that on-point echoey-room production the music correctly calls for; in that sense I hear a nod to the Toasters’ 1994 album Dub 56. The first track, “Perilous,” beats your feet with a nice melody and some great brass hooks, I was really into that. “Bagel Rooks” is such straightforward let’s-go ska I seriously thought about digging out my board and hurting myself trying to pull off a pop-shuvit in the kitchen. I loved the tiny whoa-ohhh-oh lead-in to the chorus, that was a micro-flare of pop genius, and the gang vocal oh-oh-oh thing hit me in my Danzig-plug-ska place. “Brain” gets you going with the fast pace that the Toasters always rocked you with, and the vocals in this song are my second favorite.
On an album like this, you might think that’s all you’re gonna get. “Little Man” is the song I’ll add to my Skatify playlist (please don’t throw things at my head), and it’s the best track on the album. This is the compilation song, the one you share in ska-friends’ cars. You’re like Meh, this verse is whatev—BAM, you’re nodding along to the very, very good chorus. It’s all there, all you were looking for, a perfectly constructed burst of smooth rolling ska. Just leave the album on after that. It’s refreshing to hear fun in music from a young, currently existing band, and it’s almost jarring to hear in 2021.
This is entirely unpretentious music, an honest emulation designed to relive something that’s supposed to be gone. At one point in the 90s this sounded new. Bad Operation sounds old because they’re going for old. We need it. They’re a museum exhibit for checkered slip-ons and corduroy shorts and marching band geeks briefly, mercifully getting a chance to be in a rock band. Let’s see where they go from here. Let’s also give props to that band name—talk about perfect. I had to call the 90s punk sticker collection archives to check what they already had under ‘B.’
In the meantime, ya know, pick-it-up.
