Mission of Burma | The Sound The Speed The Light

Most Likely To: be taken for granted by numbskulls.

The third album has a long history of being the milestone of a band’s career. The general pattern is: promising debut, sophomore slump, third album which consolidates all the band’s strengths and launches them into greater things ahead. It’s not an exact formula, but a brief list of third albums churns up such titles as London Calling, Parallel Lines, Kimono My House, Fear of Music, OK Computer, 154, War, Architecture and Morality, etc., etc. You get the picture. In the history of rock music, third albums have built up something of a mystique.

However, that only holds true for bands with one career. What of bands which in effect have two careers – the ones who break up then years later reunite? In those cases, a different pattern has emerged. The third album after a comeback is when the novelty begins to wear off. It’s when the public that was excited by the fact that “Hey! Such and such are back and they’re actually still good!” turns into the public that says “Oh yeah, I guess they’re still going ahead with this reunion thing, huh? Whatever.” Gung Ho, Flowers, Manscape, Modern…those titles don’t quite have the luster of the titles on the list above, do they? They were all by and large fine albums, but they were third albums of second careers and were greeted as the musical equivalents of John Travolta in Michael rather than the Travolta of Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. People were finished being happy just to have them back.

Mission of Burma now find themselves in that perilous territory with The Sound The Speed The Light. After pretty much inventing the American branch of post-punk in the early ‘80s, the band took a twenty year hiatus before returning in this decade with two well-regarded albums, Onoffon and The Obliterati. Mission of Burma don’t head off down any new paths on the album, but continue refining and consolidating their signature sound: roaring guitar anthems that draw on the energy of punk but temper the fury with sophisticated dynamics and textures. And yes, that lack of anything particularly new does put the band in danger of falling victim to the “what have you done for me lately” mentality that greeted the albums in the previous paragraph. (For the record, the artists responsible for those discs would be Patti Smith, Echo and the Bunnymen, Wire, and The Buzzcocks.)

But the Burmas are in a slightly different position than those artists. Their original career was a brief but influential blip only noticed by those who were truly plugged-in at the time. Mission of Burma only achieved legendary status and notoriety in the years after their initial break up. They never even lasted long enough to have a third album in their first go-round. As such, their reunion has always felt more like a band catching up with unfinished business than one trying to recapture past glories, and that feeling continues on The Sound The Speed The Light. It’s the work of a band that still sounds stoked to be working together.

That said, though, there is a definite feeling of routine starting to creep in to Mission of Burma’s sound. This is of course inevitable and isn’t a particularly bad thing – routine excellence is still excellence. But nothing on The Sound The Speed The Light really approaches the transcendence of the band’s best work, be it classics like “Academy Fight Song” or something of a more recent vintage like The Obliterati’s “Donna Sumeria.” Even so, the worst that could be said about it is that it’s merely a really good album from an important band – as if such things grew on trees.

Mission of Burma’s revived career has now lasted about three times as long as their original run endured. Realistically, they’ll never again match the innovation or influence of their earlier work. But that doesn’t mean that anyone who thinks they can be taken for granted because of that fact isn’t an idiot.

Listen to “1, 2, 3 Partyy!” from Mission of Burma:

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