Difficult Fun
April 2022’s Best Punk: This Is the End of Difficult Fun, Long Live Difficult Fun
Welcome to the latest (and, well, last) edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN has worked to spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy it – one last time. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? This is the end. The curtain call. That van’s loaded and we’re all going home. After a year of benefit comps for Greek squats, blackened hardcore from the basement, dosed in gasoline power pop-rock, BDSM post-punk, freaks and geeks and too much d-beat — that’s all, folks. Like all great New York hardcore bands, Difficult Fun is calling it quits on our first birthday. It’s been a great ride....
Difficult Fun: March 2022’s Best Punk
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Do rich luddites exist? Or do the very wealthy view the advent of technology — all of the industries Silicon Valley hopes to disrupt — as additional opportunities to make money, to mechanize working class jobs, to eradicate the middle class? I thought they all moved to Wyoming and Texas for the conservative politics, big private land, and lack of taxes (who needs to better the neighborhood when you’re the only one in town?) but maybe there’s a deeply felt desire to “return to ...
Difficult Fun: January 2022’s Best Punk
Welcome to the future – like the past, and just as shitty. As the days turn into months and my ability to tolerate the unjust mundanities of everyday life thins with the knowledge of each new COVID-19 strain, this intro section has begun to feel like a method acting experiment in which I try to mimic the frustrations of the music worthy of discussion below. Luckily, we’re not fully there yet – punk is best for exorcising demons, not giving into them – and parody is no way to begin the new year. So, here’s an exercise (the other one – see what I did there, Satanists?) in optimism. One of the best pieces of writerly advice I ever received was not directed at me: a friend, who wrote a very brilliant book about sex and consent, mentioned avoiding modern slang/contemporary conventions in her wr...
The Best Punk of 2021
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. There was hope at the beginning of 2021, and then there was a slap in the face. We have languished; we have endured an ever-mutating and unforgiving plague; we have survived insurrections from domestic terrorists; the Gulf of Mexico caught on fire. I’d say humanity has proven resilient over the course of the last 12 months, but that’s a word utilized to cast meaning on the meaningless, to make suffering some patriotic endeavor. You could call Sex Pistols’ “No Future” a revelan...
Difficult Fun: November 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. No time to mince words: November 2021 has been an absolutely astonishing month in the punk world; it’s a crime that some publications have already moved forward and published best of the year lists. (Looking at you, Decibel. Has no one played you the punishing Acaustix demo, Texas’ latest and greatest? Or the shit-kicking Florida crust Sociedad Bastarda demo? Or the People’s Temple demo, an inferno of a new band featuring members of Glue, Fuckin Lovers, and GUNN? What if I tol...
Difficult Fun: October 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Happy Halloween, ya ghouls! Every day is a costume party when you live and breathe punk, if you really get down to it, so consider this month’s curated list themed. (If you put it on at a party, your friends won’t be disappointed. That is, assuming you have cool friends, and your party is about 34 minutes long. These are short, blistering tracks. Mostly.) I tend to treat All Hallows Eve like any other day, save for the coveted cover show (almost always a good idea if you’re no...
Difficult Fun: September 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. This should be a space for Turnstile worship. Seriously. (Read that here, written by the ineffable Zoe Camp three years ago. SPIN was early to the melodic hardcore band’s greatness.) This month’s column should open with a commendatory review of their latest album, Glow On, and a thoughtful meditation on how some positive punks found funk and dance rhythms in their breakdowns and saved a genre in repose. Those arguments exist elsewhere. If anything, I’m mostly excited that Turn...
Difficult Fun: August 2021
Welcome to the latest edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Allow me, Captain Obvious, this one pleasure: it has come to my attention that sometimes, punk’s attraction is accessibility. Sure, “abrasion” isn’t the most alluring genre tag to people without crippling insecurities, but the fact that you can play a song with only two chords under your belt (two palm-muted chords, for the Warped Tour crowd) and that’s a song? It’s magic! Or democracy, a similarly fictitious belief. Of course, two chords only build a foundation. In the same w...
Difficult Fun: July 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the fourth edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Apathy is one hell of a drug. Live shows are back, the COVID-19 Delta variant is wreaking havoc across the globe, infections are climbing, and if there was ever a time to lean into easy, convenient nihilism, our current sci-fi dystopia is it. And yet, I’ve noticed a sense of optimism in punk – there might be no future but let’s fight for the present – and it is energizing. Or, you know, the world is still full of shit and I’m simply projecting, but this is my column and I’ll c...
Difficult Fun: July 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the fourth edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Apathy is one hell of a drug. Live shows are back, the COVID-19 Delta variant is wreaking havoc across the globe, infections are climbing, and if there was ever a time to lean into easy, convenient nihilism, our current sci-fi dystopia is it. And yet, I’ve noticed a sense of optimism in punk – there might be no future but let’s fight for the present – and it is energizing. Or, you know, the world is still full of shit and I’m simply projecting, but this is my column and I’ll c...
Difficult Fun: June 2021’s Best New Punk
Welcome to the third edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. This is a column concerned with contemporary sounds, which means it is ultimately a column about the ways in which music is shaped by the current moment. (Consider this your disclaimer. Skip below to the hot tracks if your brain has smoothed over the last 15 months.) Lately, there’s an obsession with returning to “normalcy” in America: bars, clubs, restaurants, and stores are slowly beginning to reopen, which means “normalcy” is tethered to capital; the idea that the only way t...
Difficult Fun: May 2021’s Best Punk
Welcome to the second edition of Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, entertaining readers in the process. Purists, piss off! Everyone else, enjoy. Another month, another round of Difficult Fun. Where does the time go? Wasn’t it just yesterday that the shitshow “September 11 Memorial” Madball, Murphy’s Law, and Bloodclot gig in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park became ‘80s punks own Sturgis Motorcycle Rally COVID-19 event? (Someone tell John Joseph endangering fans is “for pussies,” to borrow The Cro-Mags man’s Cro-Magnon-like language. I cringe.) Regardless, in May, good, innovative punk endured, because good, innovat...
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