Thirteen years ago Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) came together with four other musicians in Nebraska under the name Desaparecidos (meaning 'the disappeared' in Spanish) to put together an album, Read Music/Speak Spanish. Read Music/Speak Spanish was a fuzzy, loud, angry emo-punk record that was fairly at odds with the sometimes-esoteric indie-folk Oberst was best known for. It was a good album – a great album – but pretty soon after Desaparecidos went their separate ways and it seemed pretty likely that the whole thing was done. Read Music/Speak Spanish became a kind of indie cred touchstone, and Desaparecidos seemed to fade away. Until this year, when, over a decade after their first album, Desaparecidos announced Payola.
I always liked Desaparecidos better than Bright Eyes. They were more overtly political (their name refers the 'forced disappearance' of thousands of Chilean citizens in early '70s), louder, and more frenetically catchy. They were punk instead of folk, and Oberst's pitchy, awkward voice over loud drums and distorted guitars is a perfect politico-punk basement show sound. None of that has changed on Payola. Except for some slightly improved production values – I'm 90% sure Read Music/Speak Spanish was recorded inside a tin can onto a cassette tape so that's not really hard – Payola is musically very similar to Desaparecidos' first album, and politically it's just as angry, if not angrier.
'MariKKKopa', about Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, is a bitter, furious indictment of America's violent and racist immigration policies. It's angry and snide, book-ended by recordings of an interview with Sheriff Arpaio (where he says he's 'proud' of being compared to the KKK) himself. 'Slacktivist' is a snarky take-down of Twitter feed activism and the soft-socialist middle class approach to caring. It's also righteously catchy and weirdly imposing – it's the gang vocals at the end that does it. Where Read Music/Speak Spanish was occasionally vague in exactly what Desaparecidos were protesting (malls? golf? capitalism?), Payola does not beat around the bush. Every song on Payola hits a political issue bluntly and forcefully – police profiling, the NSA, immigration, Chelsea Manning, problems with the Left Wing and the Centre Left and the Right Wing and everything in between.
Not all of it is on point – '10 Steps Behind' takes aim at the burqa and Western ideas of liberation when it comes to things like the veil in Islam can be pretty narrow and smack of patriarchal colonialism – but it's there and it's a passionate album and it's so important to hear politics in music. it's always good to hear musicians stand for something.
Beyond the politics, Payola is a wall of sound. It almost never lets up, fourteen songs of Oberst's yelp-y, shouty singing over crashing drums and loud guitars. It's a solid album, and for anyone who has fond memories of Read Music/Speak Spanish, Payola a good return to form.
Review Score: 9.0 out of 10 
Payola is out now on Epitaph.
