ALBUM REVIEW: Winona Fighter – ‘My Apologies To The Chef’

There was a time where alternative music was one hell of a good time. Since pop punk—the scene’s juvenile sidekick—reached the mainstream in the ‘90s, it took the peppiness of whoa-oh original stuff but swapped tales of addiction, joblessness and societal ills for fart and sex jokes. When it’s needed, the genre reemerges to make carefree times that little bit more carefree: we certainly saw it in the chart stealing mainstream emo of the garish aughts, and even to the ‘pop punk pizza party’ stuff when the 2010s saw easycore and pop punkers boom – many of those stalwarts are still around, just closer to middle-age than kids revolutionising marketing through Tumblr.

But where’s the fun pop punk gone now? Recent times may have given us less reason to enjoy ourselves, and stripped away art spaces that provide grounds for alt communities to bang heads and strip vocal chords in unison. The genre is either folded into other guises like emo-rap, or made naff through Y2K cosplay. Then along come Winona Fighter: a three-piece fully indebted to DIY recording, no-fat catchy verse-chorus songwriting, and a name paying homage to a pop culture icon (or two?). It even seems fitting that the Nashville trio—all taking inspiration from ‘80s alt rock, Dave Grohl, hardcore, and thrash—have finally released their anticipated full-length on Rise; a label synonymous with St. Heart t-shirts, crabcore, Swancore, and everything nostalgically great that non-followers of the scene scoffed at then, and would do so more now.

Winona Fighter’s own rise has seen them open for some serious hitters across the alternative spectrum including Taking Back Sunday, Incubus, Motion City Soundtrack and, heroes of their own, The Offspring, to hone a packed record channelling the chunks that made such acts as well-loved as they are. You can hear the latter in HAMMS IN A GLASS, which picks up momentum using Crazy Taxi style skate punk and solo spots that, pardon the pun, takes the initial My Apologies To The Chef song run up a gear. Coco Kinnon, an established drummer, makes percussive flavour a part of her melodic vocal takes too, most effectively in Subaru (shoutout to ‘leaving my hometown’ pop punk tropes) and the effectively scathing therapy-penned letter to a poor partner / mama’s boy on single I’M IN THE MARKET TO PLEASE NO ONE, whose final chorus packs one of the album’s most throttling rockets of intensity. 

The polish is very much evident in this tight three-piece, all recorded and mastered by bassist Austin Luther who aimed to capture pre-big budget debut-record garage recordings (with a fitting Queens of the Stone Age example). The opening riff to JUMPERCABLES sounds lovingly unfiltered before the tracklist unravels more of Dan Fuson’s metal-borrowing riff ideas—TALK’s divebombs, the bounce of Johnny’s Dead, and the Dimebag lead licks and Southern lilt in ATTITUDE. There’s a range of subtle songwriting smarts, too. Swimmer’s Ear plays with dynamics without compromising the power of the band’s catchiness, the final chorus-slowing of Swear To God That I’m (FINE) finishes the track with aplomb and standout track Wlbrn St Tvrn fuels pit-swingers with peppered snares (where, as a side note, it’s always great to hear someone called a “tool”).

At fourteen cuts, this debut’s ramped with every trick in this productive team’s arsenal, including three rerecorded EP tracks. But every part fizzles with intention and infectious energy, that’s also sensationally easy to sing along with after just a couple of listens. It’s anthemic where it needs to be, and bottles simplicity with a passion for all the genre progenitors that came before. With a lot of music dominated by seriousness, Winona Fighter could provide the dolce vita mood that can get younger people into the history of punk, and brings back thrills from old school pop punk that us ageing fans need for our own sanity. So, who remembers hearing Armed With Crayons on Myspace, huh?

For fans of: Strung Out, The Offspring, Neck Deep

‘My Apologies To The Chef’ by Winona Fighter is released on 14th February on Rise Records.

Words by Elliot Burr