Screeching Weasel - Bark Like A Dog
1996, Fat Wreck Chords

Ben Weasel: lead guitar and all singing
Danny Vapid: bass guitar and most backup singing
Dan Panic: drums and a little backup singing
Jughead: rhythm guitar and no singing

By 1996 Screeching Weasel was just famous enough for people to begin hating them. A punk rock band that wrote catchy tunes about girls instead of boring tunes about anger, they were called "pop-punk". Green Day and other bands had made this form of music very popular, and increasingly detested among the true punk believers. At the time, it was about all I listened to. I still like maybe 4 of the bands I was into at the time. Things change. But Bark Like A Dog is a fucking great album.

It was during this reactionary period that Screeching Weasel released this, their poppiest effort yet (on Fat Mike's label, no less!), and brought down a lot of undeserved shit on themselves. Ben Weasel had already had his column pulled from the puritanical, anti-commercial Maximum Rock'n'Roll for touring with Green Day with his other band, the Riverdales (though it was later offered back to him), and he'd always been an outspoken goombah poking fun at the punk community, so he was something of a marked man. The fact that his music had been for years becoming more... well... musical sure didn't help him with the D.I.Y. fanatics. And as usual, Ben wrote all of the songs on the album, except for Get Off My Back, which he co-wrote with Vapid.

Frankly, the album is barely punk at all. If you're the type who judges music by how well it conforms to some artificial little genre, then fine, you'll hate it. Ben Weasel himself wrote that he understands why some people really hated the album, because it has "little to do with the attitude that made Screeching Weasel popular". Only in the world of punk rock does a musician seem to feel the need to apologize for experimenting with new styles. The album is just straight up, simple, 3-chord punkish rock and roll. The production is smooth, but it has a rough sound. The songs are very simple, the guitars and drumming are as good as they need to be, and Ben Weasel has an unusual and very whiny voice (needless to say, I love it). The whole "rough" aesthetic really gets played with in their later album Emo.

The sentimental (and sometimes silly) lyrics and rough but effective backup oooos and ahhhhhs are what really make this album. The standouts as far as this goes are The First Day of Summer and You Blister My Paint. The heart-on-the-sleeve emotions coupled with the raw sound are very effective, and make this album seem very sincere. I must admit that at first, I hated the comic book inspired cover art, but I've mellowed on that as I've come to appreciate the artistic (as opposed to the kitsch) value of some comics.

The 12 songs total 34 minutes and 47 seconds.

Get Off My Back
Cool Kids
The First Day of Summer
You'll Be In My Dreams Today
You Blister My Paint
Stupid Girl
Phasers on Kill
Handcuffed To You
(She Got) Electroshocked
It's Not Enough
I Will Always Be There
Your Name Is Tattooed On My Heart

Furthermore, Bark Like A Dog is a song off of their 1999 album Emo. The song contains a fair amount of ranting which is not reproduced in the lyric book, that I'm not about to transcribe. That song is an okay one musically, and the lyrics are mostly Ben musing about his philosophy of life (All I want to do is drink, sleep, and fuck. Try to be a good punk, if you're for real it won't feel right.)

ps: Screeching Weasel are not emo. They called one of their albums "Emo" ironically.