Lipona - Atlas

Lipona
Atlas
Self-​Released; 2008

Being a music critic/​snob (much less an over­weight hip­ster), I’m often pegged as some­one who doesn’t appre­ci­ate harder-​edged music. (Just because I like Suf­jan Stevens doesn’t pro­hibit me from lis­ten­ing to Norma Jean.) But what most peo­ple don’t real­ize is that I spent the bet­ter part of my early 20’s attend­ing all man­ner of local punk and hard­core shows in the sub­urbs of Hous­ton, TX, where band after band of full of high school and young col­lege kids would get on stage to per­form their ver­sion of the lat­est trendy “-core” act’s music. It was, admit­tedly, a rather bru­tal endeavor at times, but it was always worth it to dis­cover that one group who was worth a damn: they had actu­ally prac­ticed, their lyrics had actual con­tent, and they quickly devel­oped a ridicu­lously rabid following.

Lipona, on their debut full-​length, Atlas, reminds me of all those great local bands from my past in one fell swoop: they’re youth­ful, over­flow­ing with energy, and write melodic punk songs that are as catchy as hell. The drum­ming is pas­sion­ate and furi­ous, the tem­pos are appro­pri­ately rol­lick­ing with a thick head of steam, the gang vocals require you to sing along, and the gui­tar work is full of both tra­di­tional chunky punk power chords and sear­ing riffage. But what sets this band apart are the voice and lyrics of vocal­ist Yamil Velez: with a style rem­i­nis­cent of Geoff Rickly of Thurs­day (with­out the high-​pitched, scream­ing histri­on­ics) and the abil­ity to cre­ate bril­liant images of his inter­nal strug­gles (with­out com­ing across like a whiny, dis­af­fected sub­ur­ban kid), Velez car­ries a group that, for all of its abil­i­ties, could still find itself lumped in along with other above-​average inde­pen­dent punk bands that criss­cross this nation every day. The track “To Wish­ful Think­ing!” holds my favorite cho­rus on the album – “This could be the way you think con­firms your long stand­ing bias. And just when you reach the very top, will it ever be enough for you?” – serv­ing as an ode to every­one I’ve ever known who’s cast aside every­one impor­tant to them just to reach some myth­i­cal zenith of accom­plish­ment. The ten songs of this record cover barely 32 min­utes of time, but fans of intel­li­gent punk music will find that Atlas is worth every sin­gle one of those ticks of a clock. I just hope that Lipona can con­tinue their res­olute and deter­mined uphill climb.