Andrew Jackson Jihad are a band in conflict. All of the touring members strongly dislike each other, and they are not on speaking terms.

Ok, that second part  isn’t true at all, but what is true is the fact the band can’t seem to decide if they are monumentally depressed, or the luckiest band to ever play in front of an audience. Frontman Sean Bonnette’s lyrics constantly toe the fine line between activism and absurdity, and the listener is never sure what bizarre world they’ll find themselves in on the next song.

This lyrical volatility has helped the five-piece become much more than just another “woe-is-me” folk act, and their utter weirdness took center stage in front of a sold-out crowd at the Sinclair on Monday night.

After enjoyable sets from Dogbreth and Cheap Girls, the members of AJJ rushed on stage to make last minute adjustments to their gear, eschewing the traditional 30 minute wait for a longer (28 song) set. This meant that the first words Bonnette uttered into the mic weren’t the opening stanza to “Temple Gradin”, but instead were “I think I’ve got a fucked cable… should I troubleshoot it?” It was obvious that the band had left the rock star egos back in Arizona (or maybe they never had them to begin with).

Cheap Girls

While the band is touring in support of their new record Christmas Island, they didn’t hammer the audience with new songs. At one point Bonnette said “we’re just going to play hit after hit” – and that’s basically what they did.

Those hits had their fair share of references to the disposed, the homeless, and the abused, but you would never know it based on the smiles on everyone’s faces. The crowd should have felt at least a little bit guilty about how much they were enjoying singing along, but they were too giddy to think about that.

This review would be severely lacking if I didn’t mention the covers. They weren’t very good, but they might have been the most memorable part of the show. When someone shouted out “Zombies By The Cranberries” (which is actually an AJJ song title) they decided to play a half-assed cover of the original, before joking about how much Boston must love the Cranberries because they’re Irish… or Welsh. No one was really sure which.

Later in the show, someone used the phrase “definitely maybe”, and suddenly Bonnette was searching for the chords to “Wonderwall”. They were able to make it through the entire song, but not without fumbling a few of the lines. They  closed the night with another cover – this one a significantly more polished version of “I Think of Demons” by Roky Erikson and the Aliens (yeah… I’ve never heard of them either).

All in all, the night can be summed up with a line from “Distance” – which was the second song on the setlist. It goes: “I hate whiny fucking songs like this but I can’t afford a therapist. So sorry guys, here’s a solo”.

It’s obvious that Bonnette and crew don’t carry their misery with them on stage. That’s because they’ve already dumped it all into their songs so that everyone can sing along.

Their live performances are downright joyous, and it’s probably  because they’ve already exercised all their demons through songwriting. They looked like the happiest dudes in the world on Monday night, and they were thrilled to have a crowd to join them in the catharsis.

You can also check out our recent interview with Sean Bonnette right here

Dogbreth