Don't Know How to Party

Thankfully, signing to a major label (Mercury) didn’t homogenize The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ music. While “A Man Without” and “Isaachar” might indicate the label’s hope that the band would turn out to be more of a heavy metal act—an easier product to market in the era of grunge—Don’t Know How to Party was proof that they wouldn’t and couldn’t be anything other than the Bosstones. While the group still favored firing-on-all-cylinders tunes like “Our Only Weapon,” “Don’t Know How to Party,” and “Almost Anything Goes,” they were moving away from the wild abandon of their early songs—which often felt like a trip down a steep, unpaved highway in a children’s wagon—and toward structures that were more burly and heroic. A cover of Stiff Little Fingers’ 1980 punk anthem “Tin Soldiers” sets the tone for the rest of the album. As the band started to write songs designed to get a club full of ruffians pumping their fists in unison, they also turned the world onto the patented brand of biting-yet-tuneful ska epitomized by “Someday I Suppose.”