The Interrupters is a group I recently discovered through the weekly discovery option in Spotify. The algorithm recommended to me their song She’s Kerosene. I instantly fell in love with this song with the groovy music and the weird lyrics of this song. It just made me vibe to it, and I even improvised some dance moves in my bedroom. This song was my introduction to this band.
The band formed in 2011 in Los Angeles with Aimee Allen as lead singer, Kevin Bivona as guitarist and his twin brothers Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass). Even before launching their debut album, they were active in the West Coast punk scene, touring with some well-established bands of the region. In 2014, their eponymous debut album came out and found some success, letting them tour the US and Canada with other punk bands and they even toured Europe with Bad Religion.
This album has some good songs that I personally like a lot. My favorite is the song Take back the power, which is a direct call for the citizens to take back the power in a grim world. Other songs that are worth mentioning is Family, which relates the adventure of a ‘crazy family’ with the police, and Easy on you, which relates the story of abandoned and lost country youth ending up as a drug dealer. All told in that groovy atmosphere that only ska bands have the secret of.
In 2016, their second album Say It Out Loud, came out and climbed up to 25th place on the US Indie Charts, allowing them to travel on their first US tour as the main band and letting them play on the Vans Warped Tour the same year, one of the largest festivals in the US at the time.
This album is better than their debut. It is really rooted in the punk/ska sound that is one of the defining characteristics of the band. With bangers
of songs, like She got Arrested and By My Side. The first song tells the story of a woman escaping a violent marriage by ‘shooting down her man’.
Despite the chilling theme of the song, it will give you the sudden urge to dance and clap your hands. The other By My Side, will simply make
want to sing along to the amazingly simple chorus, reliving your past youth friendships.
In 2018 their international breakthrough album, Fight the Good Fight came out. And boy! Did it break through. It peaked at 141st place on the US Billboard Charts and topped 2nd place of Alternative scene charts. It also reached 4th place on the Australian Charts and 27th place on the German Charts. Their lead song She’s Kerosene reached 1st place in the Canadian Rock charts and was certified gold in the same country. Meanwhile in the US it peaked at 4th place in the Alternative Charts.
Fight the Good Fight is in my opinion their best album up to this day, with absolute bangers of songs such as She’s Kerosene, Gave you everything, Leap of Faith, Title Holder, Broken World and Got Each Other. Those songs will make you dance wherever you are. My personal favorites are She’s Kerosene and Broken World. As I already mentioned, the first song has some good vibes with some weird lyrics that talk about how someone recognizes and escapes an abusive relationship. In my other favorite song, the lyrics are much more lighthearted if I can put it like this. They speak about how we need to fight to bring some unity to a broken world and we should let love guide us.
In 2023, their current album In the Wild came out to the world. It was less well received by the public, but still more appreciated by the public than their first two albums. This album further cemented their place in the modern ska scene. It topped at 145th place on the American Billboard Charts and was in the 2nd place in the Indie Choice. The Album has some good songs such as Anything was Better and As We Live in collaboration with Tim Armstrong and Rhoda Dakar. Those songs were still giving me good vibes, but were less interesting to me than all their earlier albums (In my main playlist I have only saved 3 songs of this album while I saved 6 songs alone from the album Fight the Good Fight). However, I do recommend listening to the album if only for the songs listed above. In the song As We Live, the band shares, along with Tim Armstrong and Rhoda Dakar, a universal message of love to the world. Meanwhile, in the song Anything was Better, Aimee Allen talks about her experiences of going to LA to start her musical career early in her life. Currently, The Interrupters are touring the world with their latest album, and they made a stop at den Atelier on the 16th of June this year, which was sold out.
by Pierre