While We’re At It is the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ tenth studio album. After reaching mainstream success in the 90s, the band released a total of 4 more albums through 2011. Each album released after Let’s Face It was pretty much a dud with only a few notable songs. While We’re At It, released in 2018, is the first album the band has released in 7 years. I had a lot of hope for this album, but it came up short. It’s apparent that the band put politics at the forefront of the album with songs like Here We Are which showcases the band’s negative views on the current state of the US. This is pretty much riddled throughout the album. The Bosstones are really upfront about it which doesn’t really work well. It would be a lot better if they used more imagery and metaphors, but instead they just come out and explicitly sing about left-wing political topics, alienating a large portion of their fans that don’t want to hear about politics. There is a tasteful way to work politics into music, and that was not shown in this album. Although most of the album was pretty bad, the album has two redeeming songs: Unified and Green Bay, Wisconsin. Unified,as the title suggests, talks a lot about the importance of unity in a divided nation. Green Bay, Wisconsin is by far my favorite song on the album. It’s a break from the politics, talking about just having fun and listening to ska. Overall, it looks like the Mighty Mighty Bosstones will unfortunately still be paying the bills off of albums that came out over 20 years ago as While We’re At It was a disappointment.
First Impression: The album is not worth listening to, but if you’re a fan of ska, listen to Green Bay, Wisconsin. That song is awesome.
Jacob's Music Blog 