Album Review: Desaparecidos - Payola

Thirteen years after dropping their debut album, 2002’s Read Music/Speak Spanish, Nebraskan indie-punk collective Desaparecidos (the name itself being Spanish for “the disappeared ones”) are back with their second effort, Payola. While that first album found the politically-charged band — fronted by Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes fame — railing chiefly against the mundanity of everyday life in the suburbs, on Payola they’ve expanded the scope of their scorn to a more global level and unearthed plenty to be incensed about.

Six of the record’s 14 tracks were released on a string of 7” singles as the band kicked back into life in 2012 following a lengthy break — including strong numbers MariKKKopa, The Left Is Right and The Underground Man — yet the sound (co-produced by Oberst’s long-term cohort Mike Mogis) remains pretty cohesive across the board, raw and urgent and possessing plenty of organic hooks. But it’s a predominantly lyric-driven affair, and of the new songs the punchy City On The Hill looks at class divides, Golden Parachutes eviscerates the corporate landscape, Radicalized examines the centuries-old but currently-escalating east/west schism whilst Slacktivist is concerned with the quest to take change beyond the internet and into the real world.

Rest assured, these boys are committed to presenting serious issues — Payola may be unrelentingly bleak and earnest on the surface, but it’s saved by the band’s unquestionable conviction and the edgy punk-tinged rock they conjure in which to house these sprawling concerns.