“Son of a Gun” by Search the City, Thursday, April 27, 2023

Kicking off the criminally catchy debut record, A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It, from Search the City, "Son of a Gun" sets the tone of the pop-punk band's two-disc discography, which can be best summed up as tongue-in-cheek, cliché-ridden lyrics and tight upbeat, emotional, well-produced melodies. The band seemed to be both a product of Tooth & Nail Records' push in the late '00s for duplicating the success of their early '00s roster and a victim of when that strategy didn't work due to the collapse of the music industry when record sales were plummeting. In 2009, the band quietly left the label.

SO LET ME GET THIS STORY STRAIGHT. I attended Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois for the second time in 2008. The group I traveled with aimed to be up there for at least one of the pre-festival days, but sometimes car troubles or something else unexpected would delay the arrival. In 2008, though, we made it up for half of the day before the festival which was Tooth & Nail Day. Tooth & Nail Records sponsored a few stages and many of their new signees would play earlier in the day and some of the bigger acts would headline during peak times. I happened to catch part of Search the City's set, but there was either another band to see or we had to set up camp. I wasn't impressed by their performance. While the instruments sound good, lead singer Josh Frost's vocals weren't on pitch, a problem I've seen with a lot of new bands. Although gas was expensive and entrance to the festival wasn't cheap, I had saved up enough money for merch and bought a lot of CDs, one of them was A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It. Even though I didn't care for their set, the Ryan Clark artwork and the catchy radio single on RadioU "Clocks and Time Pieces" and maybe a discount price for buying a bundle of Tooth & Nail's new releases had me giving Search the City a second chance. 

I CAN'T BE YOUR BULLET TO BITE DOWN ON. Similar to the first single by The All-American Rejects "Swing, Swing," "Son of a Gun" opens with an organ. When The All-American Rejects released "Swing, Swing," they were kind of an anti-cool, Weezer type band, highlighting their indie pop-punk sound. But in 2005 when the Rejects released their breakthrough record, Move Along, the band instantly became cool. The opening organ in "Son of a Gun" feels like a hipster nod to The All-American Rejects from one of the bands that Tooth & Nail was gambling on becoming the next Anberlin. The lyrics on Fire certainly don't match the nuance of Anberlin, Mae, Emery, or any of the label's success stories, and the writing style of Matt Thiessen and his band Relient K had moved away from punny cliches with Forget and Not Slow Down. But I thought of Fire as a guilty pleasure album. I knew that the lyrics were dumb. I knew it was more sugar and fat than protein and fiber. I knew that it sounded like the music posh boys who drove BMWs and wore Ralph Lauren and shopped at Abercrombie, but somehow in my car I could blast "The Rescue," "Ambulance Chaser," and "Son of a Gun" and feel like I was allowed to be caught up with the emotion of the song and not think too deeply about it. So today, that's my best defense for the song of the day. I just like it. Do I ever need another reason? Yes, of course, if I'm going to be a writer. But sometimes, I need a little ear candy.

 

Read “Son of a Gun” by Search the City on Genius.