Angel Du$t - Yak: A Collection Of Truck Songs (LP) - Neon Green Vinyl

Angel Du$t’s Yak: A Collection Of Truck Songs landed on Roadrunner Records on October 22, 2021, and it still feels like a shot of sunshine thrown across a punk frame. Justice Tripp, best known for fronting Baltimore bruisers Trapped Under Ice, steers this band toward something brighter and stranger, a lane they started carving with Pretty Buff and push even further here. The title jokes about truck songs, but the record moves like a compact car with a big engine, quick off the line and dead set on melody.

You hear it right away on Big Bite, one of the lead singles that set the tone for the album. It’s crunchy and immediate, the kind of song that turns a walk to the shop into a head-nodding march. Then All The Way Dumb waltzes in with a grin, catchy in that candy-stick way Angel Du$t does so well, guitars chiming and drums bouncing like an old power pop single. The hardcore DNA is in the punch and the pacing, but the delivery is sweet and sly. If you came up on their earliest work and wondered where the bite went, it is here, it just shows its teeth in hooks rather than breakdowns.

Dancing On The Radio is the curveball and a small event by itself, a true duet with Tim Armstrong. His sandpaper voice slides in against Tripp’s easy melody and suddenly you are hearing a bridge between different corners of punk history, the kind of crossover that makes total sense once it hits your ears. It feels like a late night singalong, lights low, two voices leaning into a chorus you will catch yourself humming the next day. That sense of community hangs over the whole record. Angel Du$t are Baltimore lifers with friends across scenes, including ties to Turnstile, and you can feel that open-armed spirit in how these songs welcome in jangle, acoustic strum, and radio-ready sparkle without losing their snap.

Yak is tidy, about a half hour, and the sequencing is no-nonsense. Verses arrive fast, choruses faster. The rhythm section keeps everything buoyant, leaving room for little guitar figures to sparkle around Tripp’s vocals. It is not that the band has gone soft, it is that they have learned how to make a punchline out of a chord change and a body check out of a backbeat. Play it start to finish and you get a breezy ride that never drifts into background noise. There is a reason these songs became fan favorites on tour, they are built for a room full of bodies, from front-rail kids to the folks in the back by the bar.

A lot of punk bands talk about writing pop songs. Angel Du$t actually writes them, and Yak is the proof. The melodies feel classic in a way that nods to old radio even as the production keeps things tactile and loud. It is the sort of record that rewards repeat plays, little details jumping out once you get past the sugar rush. A small guitar harmony here, a rhythmic feint there, vocal lines that slide up when you expect them to fall. That playfulness keeps the album from ever feeling like a genre exercise. It is lived-in, it is theirs.

If you are crate digging, Yak: A Collection Of Truck Songs vinyl is a fun one to pull. The songs open up on a turntable, the guitars a hair warmer, the choruses crowding your speakers like friends at your door. Angel Du$t vinyl in general has a way of becoming party staples, the kind of records you loan out and then have to hunt down again. You can buy Angel Du$t records online easily enough, but it is just as satisfying to spot this tucked into the A section at a Melbourne record store, or flipping through bins of vinyl records Australia shops keep for the punk curious. For collectors, keeping Angel Du$t albums on vinyl around feels right for this band’s mix of grit and sugar.

Yak does not posture. It smiles, pushes the tempo, and lets the songs do the talking. That alone makes it one of the more welcoming punk-adjacent records of its year. Put it on when you need a quick hit of daylight, or when you want to impress a friend who thinks guitars can only be angry. It is proof that melody can swing just as hard as a mosh part, and sometimes a truck song can cruise with the windows down.