The joyous blast of distorted power chords propelling Life of Sin, the debut album by Philly punks the Bad Ups, are enough of an adrenaline boost that it’s easy to overlook the level of songcraft guitarists Travis McKayle and Mike Dougherty have up their tattooed sleeves.
Raised on the country-and-western tunes his grandfather played at backyard parties and the reggae his Jamaican father played around the house, frontman McKayle’s musical inspirations run as deep as his interest in non-trad instruments – for punk, at least.
“It’s like, ‘three chords and the truth,’ or whatever they say,” McKayle says. “I always liked bluegrass a lot because the tempo is a lot closer to a NOFX beat.”
But for now, he’s keeping his interest in banjo and melodica to himself in favor of the caffeinated punk rock he fell in love with by listening to records released by taste-making labels Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords.
Hell, even reggae and ska, which along with punk formed the three pillars of the band’s sound on the EPs Life Is Swell (2019) and 91 (2023), are in short supply on their first long player.
“We were like, let’s hit ’em with the punk, and then we’ll expand from there as we keep going,” McKayle says. “We’ve got more of that in the back pocket right now.”
Since forming in 2018, the Bad Ups – a variation on the Caribbean patois term “baddup,” meaning to treat someone poorly or violently – have played gigs with punk standard bearers Face to Face and the Bouncing Souls, among others, building a following with energetic shows that lean into their roots.
A lasting key benefit of having an eclectic musical upbringing, which included guitar lessons in the style of Chet Atkins, is an open-minded approach to songcraft. To wit, McKayle and Dougherty filled Life of Sin with guitar-nerd Easter eggs like the chorusy, new-wave guitar textures on songs like Sweet and Low, and employed rabble-rousing acoustic guitar strumming on closing song NTB.
“I think a strong suit that we have is that we’re not quite confined to the four walls of punk rock,” Dougherty says. “We have multiple genres we can kind of slide into and out of and do relatively well.”
- Life of Sin is out now via Jump Start Records.
