You do have to like Dan Sartain sooner or later. Yes, there’s something about his work that’s a bit knowing, and, as someone very brilliant once wrote, it is extraordinarily difficult to be ironic and make great rock music at the same time, but Sartain’s the kind of guy who you feel has no trouble walking, reading, and chewing really complicated gum at the same time.
Too Tough To Live finds Sartain in full punk rock mode. If you like the Ramones, well, listen to the Ramones, but if you want to hear a guy trying to sound like the Ramones and knowing that you know he’s doing it, well you’ve found the soundtrack for January.
Also very present on Too Tough to Live is the influence of The Cramps. This is especially the case on the fiery opener ‘Nam Vet’. The closer, ‘In Death’, too, struck me as camp Cramps at its finest. You won’t hear a better opening lyric all year than the first words of ‘Fuck F*iday’: “Fuck Friday, Fuck Saturday, Fuck Sunday, Fuck you…” Beautifully mindless and angry, it’s one of the real pleasures of the record. Hard not to like ‘I Got Insurance’ as well, which has even fewer surprises but handles itself quite well.
‘Rona’ is the most Ramones-esque, you get the feeling he was trying to do an anagram of their name when he hit on the title. The lyrical content veers closer to River-era Bruce Springsteen; however, full of blue collar love and guts. It’s not a game changer, but Sartain really brings the energy this time.
