Filthy Thieving Bastards

The side project of San Francisco street punks the Swingin’ Utters is taking shape in a way that will likely see them attaining a certain degree of media respectability that most punk bands rarely manage to achieve. By expanding their musical boundaries into more palatable territory, Utters members Johnny Bonnel and Darius Koski have undoubtedly caught the ears of music critics who dismiss new punk rock as recycled crap. (You only have to look as far as the Weakerthans to see how this works. The critics who have been falling over themselves to heap praise upon them likely didn’t know who John Samson was when he was in Propagandhi.) Last year’s TKO Records EP gave us an idea of what the Filthy Thieving Bastards were capable of and their debut LP follows this up nicely. Continuing in the Pogues/Billy Bragg direction, they add some country twang to some of their lively tunes and deliver a solid release that calls for repeated listening.