CDs Revisited: AFI - 'Answer That and Stay Fashionable'

image via Amazon.
I remember when AFI released Sing the Sorrow and hit it huge, one of my "fun facts" to pull out in a conversation about them was that AFI used to be a hardcore punk band. (There was a reason I didn't get invited to a lot of parties in high school.) I only knew a handful of songs that I had found using Kazaa (I hadn't quite made my way to Limewire yet) but that didn't stop me from acting like I was some kind of big fan of their old stuff, and I'm sure I was overly smug about it every time- making it sound as if I believed anyone who didn't know was a poser. (Now that I think about it, there's probably a reason why I still don't get invited to a lot of parties to this day.)

What I don't remember, however, is when I finally went out and bought a copy of Answer That and Stay Fashionable. It was likely some point during the second half of my sophomore year of high school, and I'm 90% sure that I bought it at the Best Buy not too far from my school, but that's just speculation. These days I don't really consider myself to be much of an AFI fan regardless of the era, but I would go as far as to say that I'm a fan of Sing the Sorrow (more on that whenever that album pops up), and this album. Everything else I enjoy bits and pieces of, but overall I don't think I really enjoy most AFI albums all the way through.

The differences between Answer That and Stay Fashionable and Sing the Sorrow (other than the obvious sonic differences, duh) are vast though. Whereas I find Sing the Sorrow to be a conceptually incredible album (again, more on that album to come in the future), what I really enjoy about Answer That and Stay Fashionable is that it's obnoxious. It's snotty punk rock with songs about meathead jocks, staying in bed all day, listening to the Misfits, and various breakfast cereals. It's not great, or even all that revolutionary in the same way that those early punk and hardcore records were, but it's got the energetic music and apathetic lyrics that made punk rock so appealing to bored youth in the 90's (or seeing as how I discovered this album in 2004, bored youth of any era, really).

Final verdict: It's a fine album. Not AFI at their best, but no one ever agrees on when AFI's best is anyway (but usually when someone argues in favor of early AFI, I feel like Very Proud of Ya and especially Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes are cited more frequently as being at the top)

Stream Answer That and Stay Fashionable below and tell me all about how incredibly wrong I am for thinking that it's not mind-blowingly great or revolutionary.


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