AWOLNATION: Here Come the Runts
Aaron Bruno is a man with an interesting musical history. He flirted with mainstream success fronting two previous bands, the early '00s pop-punk unit Hometown Hero and the electronic-tinged Under the Influence of Giants. Both bands found some minor radio exposure; neither crossed over to widespread appreciation. It wasn't until he went solo that Aaron Bruno truly found his calling. (And make no mistake, Awolnation remains largely a solo brainchild, despite the interchangeable live band that Bruno brings on tour.)
It was 2011's debut LP Megalithic Symphony that broke Awolnation, with one of the most unlikely smash hits of all time and one of the longest-running singles in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. That song was Sail- a freakishly downbeat mid-tempo mash-up of rock and roll angst, lyrical gloom and dubsteb bass drops. If Sail proved anything, it's that a band can still explode, every once in a while, through sheer force of experimentation. (And naturally, any successful experiment begets imitation. Imagine Dragons are currently dominating radio with Believer, a song that sounds more than a little bit indebted to Sail.)
After a monster hit like Sail, any new album from Awolnation arrives with a fair amount of high expectations. Their third album Here Comes the Runts (Red Bull Records) is, for the most part, a fine return on those expectations. While not as surprising as Megalithic Symphony or as consistent as their excellent sophomore album Run, Awolnation is making a nice steady habit out of loud, rousing, genre-defying modern rock. And modern is perhaps one of the best ways of describing their sound. Every single track is at once both catchy and unpredictable. Time will tell if their Beach Boys-meets-Nine Inch Nails production will sound dated one day. But here in 2018, there's nobody else that quite sounds like Awol- even as Imagine Dragons steals their tricks.
The album opens with a title track that arrives with an upbeat stomp, and then declines in tempo, and then picks up speed again, as if to defy any impression you might already be forming. First single Passion is a loud, heavy ode to creativity itself. And almost every subsequent track is, at very least, a contradiction to something that came before: The raucous shout-along Miracle Man is inexplicably followed by the sincere and lovelorn Handyman.
It remains to be seen whether anything on Here Come the Runts makes a splash as big as Sail. But that's exactly where Awolnation's greatest strength lies: the sheer eclecticism of this band makes it impossible to know if their next song will be their best, or what it will even sound like. B+
