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Nov 29, 2024 By Caleb Campbell

Just in time for the holidays, Finnish post punk band Drug Store Raid shared their debut album, Background Music For Family Arguments, out now via Kieku Records. The band has been playing together since 2021, releasing a handful of singles and an three-track EP last year, When A Girl Shot A Pony. Background Music For Family Arguments builds upon that foundation, drawing on punk, jazz-funk, no-wave, dance-punk, and pop, melding them all together with nervy vocal deliveries and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. The results feel drawn from the same vein as bands like Viagra Boys; forward-thinking post punk that blurs genres boundaries and lampoons everything in the band’s sight.

Ahead of the album’s release, the band has already shared a pair of new singles, “Vi Är Finnjävlar” and “I Wanna Be A Hipster,” previewing the record’s off-the-wall songcraft and needling lyrical bite. The former track rumbles along with jagged basslines, punctuated by squawking sax accents, and howling vocals, while the latter track trades off between outre jazzy passages and stormy post punk builds. In between, the band’s lyrics look at modernity and identity through a unflinchingly absurdist lens, taking aim at preening hipster subcultures and Finnish identity itself with “Vi Är Finnjävlar,” which translates to We Are Finnbastards.

Elsewhere, “Phar Mac T” and “This Is Not a Drug Song” offer nervy dance punk freakouts while “Suzy” plays out like a smokey, slow-burning ballad, sprawling outwards in a style that splits the difference between gothic and noir. There’s traces of Talking Heads and DEVO in the mix, moving alongside moodier fare like Swans, Bauhaus, or the Birthday Party. One of the record’s standout ragers comes with “Gutter,” which features one of the band’s wildest vocal performances alongside a rollicking spaghetti-western-style hook, all building into a bleak, dissonant guitar solo.

As the band describes, “‘Gutter’ is a song about God, violence, water parks, sharks and bleach. This is no post-punk jolly happy tune, this is death! End is here, so you gotta get away!”

Check out the full album below, out everywhere now via Kieku Records.