Among other things, High Fidelity taught the public that there are many rules to putting together a good mix tape. After all, says Rob Gordon, you’re expressing yourself using someone else’s poetry, and this is a difficult thing. Perhaps such self-consciousness makes it impossible to approach Oil: Chicago Punk Refined in an unassuming manner. Way back when, it may have been possible to see it as a mere collection of good or bad songs, but this project arriving at this particular moment in these rock-meets-postmodernism times invites a great deal more analysis than may be good for it.
Thick Records, the men and (possibly) women behind this project, gathered together 19 Chicago punk bands to record original songs in a makeshift studio in an old oil blending factory over the course of 15 days. An exciting premise, no doubt, but there’s more to it than just that. The CD’s implicit aim is to put Chicago punk on the map, to give it a definition than stands apart from the more familiar subgenres. British punk had the Sex Pistols and the Clash; New York punk had the Ramones; and L.A. punk had X. What does Chicago punk have? The bands on this compilation, that’s who — or so Thick Records boldly proclaims.
As a definitive statement, Oil is far too scattershot to function effectively. It could’ve emphasized a particular sound and run the risk of being reductionist, but it instead jumped to the opposite end of the spectrum and displayed a huge amount of diversity. That may be more all encompassing, but it’s next to impossible to pinpoint any unifying thread running throughout the featured bands. On the one hand, there are groups like Rise Against and Detachment Kit that would fit in at least as comfortably on a Chicago speed metal sampler as they do here, and on the other hand, there are downright soft numbers. In between, you can hear the influences of Jonathan Richman, the Police, and even a bit of They Might Be Giants. It all makes it hard to imagine a mood that would make a hypothetical listener want to pop Oil into their CD player. It’s even more difficult to imagine anyone getting a clear picture of what Chicago punk is about from listening to it.
Yet even if Oil fails to present the Windy City punk scene to the world in a very coherent light, it does succeed in letting everyone know that there is a sizable load of exciting music being pumped out along the shores of Lake Michigan. Oil is inevitably patchy, but there is an impressive haul of gems to be found therein. No one familiar with the area should be surprised to see Haymarket Riot and Alkaline Trio come out at or near the top of the heap, but even those already converted to their following have plenty more to discover. There are a few primitives that sound like their record collections featured little besides Motorhead, but they are mercifully outnumbered by thoughtful craftsmen and craftswomen who happen to play louder and faster than average.
Local H has the largest name recognition among these owing to their brief flirtation with the national spotlight, but their entry here proves that they are a solid local band who overachieved rather than a deserving national band forced to slum it. Others are much more exciting, and the honor roll is impressively long. The Ghost does what punk bands should do and finds a fresh variation on a limited formula. The Tossers exhibit a fine sense of humor and even reverence for an Irish ditty cranked up to eleven. Plain White T’s turn in a very fine song that could’ve ridden the early-nineties Big Star revival to real prominence had it come along at the right time. Lastly, special honors go to Owls, Tom Daily, and Robert Nanna. They don’t sound very fitting on a punk sampler, but they do sound easily good enough to be welcome anywhere they can be heard. If they help expand our definition of what punk can be, then so much the better. If not, they’re simply a few more reasons to pick up this low-priced comp.