Parasites Retro-Pop Remasters LP
PARASITES are a band that, for some reason, never checked all the boxes with me when it came to their brand of pop punk. Unlike so many of their more contemporaries, they just seemed to lack something. Maybe it was that they’re a bit more complex than the average “1-2-3-4 woah-oh!” RAMONES-worshiping pop punkers. Listening to the reissue of this collection, I’m now realizing that maybe I should have had a bit more of an open ear to, at the very least, this album. More in line with, say, a band like WESTON than the QUEERS, these are straight-up pretty decent hard-edged pop songs. Maybe you subscribe to the aforementioned opinion given in the first two sentences of this review. If so, perhaps go ahead and give this a second spin. I do want to go on record and let it be known that I believe “Hang Up” is one of the best songs ever written, though.