CD Description
As the music industry's fixation with the commercial possibilities of all things "alternative" grows, many record companies look towards punk's glory days of the late 70's and themid-80's for divine inspiration.
Towards that end, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a hard-working octet from Boston, snugly fit the niche. They borrowed from England's Two-Tone movement (which punkified ska, an off-shoot of reggae), and from Los Angeles' punk-funk stew (which produced such hybrid-happy acts as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone). Yet while the Bosstones wear these influences on their collective sleeve, they are still creatures of their surroundings, and what exemplifies QUESTION THE ANSWERS is the group's abilityto personalise the music and not overstep the boundaries oftheir knowledge.
Songs like "A Sad Silence"--a story of adolescent ignorance regarding a neighbor's drug habit--and "Hell Of A Hat"--which questions inner-city gangsta styles--provide first-hand glimpses of the social problems they address. And the arrangements they are set to--power chords, fatbrass fills, endless tempo changes--reiterate the same working-class-neighborhood stances used by the Specials and early Clash. So while the Bosstones do not provide any of their own answers, they show themselves to be worthy succesors to those who first tried.