There's a whole lot of punk music flying about these days -- pop-punk, indie punk, post punk, whatever you call it, it's here. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's truly awful, the rest is thrown onto the "mediocre" pile.
For punk to stand out these days, it needs to be one of two things. The first is catchy (and by that I mean actually memorable, a tune that won't leave you for days). The other winner is post-punk, mixing it up and embracing other genres (think "Rock the Casbah" and you're there). Montreal-based band Ought have opted for the latter with "The Weather Song," and it pays off in spades.
With a chorus that sounds like it's been cut from one song and pasted into another, "The Weather Song" immediately sticks out. The combination of the noodling guitar and synth in the verse creates an interesting math rock opening, with Tim Beeler's vocals providing a sneering commentary. From speech, he quickly develops to a powerful, scratchy melody, which culminates in a thumping chorus worthy of The Vaccines at their height.
After hitting the chorus, you'd expect to stay on this path until the end, but Ought revert back to the syncopated, polyphonic time and time again. The constant change of key absolutely shouldn't work, and it feels like two bands have been forced to write a song together. However, with a chorus as catchy as this, and a verse as funky and musically interesting, it's a combination that couldn't ever fail.
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