Soundtrack to Your Geekout – Volume #1, Track #5

This will probably be the only edition of S2YG that could be given the subtitle of “completely obvious, borderline trite connection” as well as the shortest article of this run as its basically one giant “duuhhhhhh” moment, but I’m willing to take that hit since I love both the song and the issue I’m about to mash together.

Earlier this week (and by that I mean yesterday), I wrote a review for a little one shot comic called Serenity: Float Out by Patton Oswalt and Patric Reynolds. As it turns out, I didn’t quite say everything I wanted to say about it, namely that it finally gave me a satisfactory set of images for one of my favorite punk songs of the last three years. Released in the summer of 2007, The Great Awake arguably broke Ontario’s The Flatliners into the North American punk rock mainstream, landing them tours with none other than labelmates NoFX, The Dropkick Murphys and other similarly important punk rock legends. Track 2, a little ditty called “Eulogy” is easily my favorite track on the record, and utterly appropriate for the story told in Float Out.

Since I already did most of my talking about the powerful storytelling and massively fantastic art of Float Out in my review, I’m gonna jump right to what I like about “Eulogy” and The Flatliners in general. While I do take a certain amount of pride in my demanding a little more from my music than most people, sometimes I really just love straight forward rockers. The Flats are easily one of the ballsiest, non-pretentious melodic punk bands out there right now, and this track is evidence not only of their stellar ability to write a catchy punk track (not as easy as one would think), but of their outright honesty of said songwriting. The point is simple: the band (or maybe just frontman Chris Cresswell) lost someone near and dear to them, and this is their eulogy…nothing more, nothing less. Simple, heartfelt and to the point…if all modern punk had even two of these three characteristics, maybe the scene WOULDN’T be on life support.

The connection to the issue is stupidly obvious: Float Out was the functional eulogy for Hoban “Wash” Washburn, one of the Firefly-verse’s most beloved characters, nearly five whole years after said character’s death. However, unlike most eulogies, which tend to be a little more stoic, this one contained high stakes space battles with cannibals, vengeful smugglers and overzealous government agents, keeping the pace set to “fast” and the fun level locked at “extremely.” What better song to lay over it then a quick, riff heavy punk tune with a thumping drum beat and biting-yet-melodic vocal style that is ABOUT SOMEONE BELOVED THAT DIED.